Exploring Perceptions of Cultural Difference in IRB Family Sponsorship Decisions by Sarom Bahk A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Laws Faculty of Law University of Toronto © Copyright by Sarom Bahk 2011 Exploring Perceptions of Cultural Difference in IRB Family Sponsorship Decisions Sarom Bahk Master of Laws Faculty of Law University of Toronto 2011 Abstract This thesis analyzes the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB)’s treatment of culture in recent family sponsorship decisions. Drawing upon theories of cultural difference, identity construction, and Critical Race Theory, it examines IRB decision- makers’ assessments of cultural factors and their influence on the evaluation of parties’ credibility. This thesis argues that appellants and applicants before the Immigration Appeal Division often had to demonstrate that their family class relationships were “performed” in accordance with the norms of their culture. Many IRB Members relied on essentialist conceptions of culture, and thus generated problematic images of both cultural minorities and Canadian society.
Further, the identity of parties was often constructed in terms of defined categories such as ethnic background, religion, marital status, age, and disability. In conclusion, this thesis offers reflections on how issues of cultural identity can be more fairly and sensitively addressed by administrative tribunals such as the IRB. ii Acknowledgments I am enormously grateful to my thesis supervisor, Ayelet Shachar, for her generous and thoughtful guidance throughout the course of this project. I also thank my S.
advisor, Howie Kislowicz, for his insightful comments. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, which awarded me with a Graduate Fellowship. I am indebted to my friends and colleagues for many sanity-preserving discussions over the years on law, academics, work, and everything in between. Finally, I thank my parents for their endless love and support throughout this and every other stage of my lengthy student career.
I dedicate this thesis to them and to Niketh Pareek, whose patience, understanding, and encouragement served as daily reminders that marriage is about turning a person of your choosing into family. iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION.
RATIONALE OF THIS STUDY. The IRB’s Regulatory Function. Understanding Credibility Assessments. OVERVIEW OF THE THESIS.
9 CHAPTER 2 CULTURE, RACE, AND IMMIGRATION LAW: A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK. CONCEPTIONS OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE. The Importance of Culture. Problematic Representations of Culture.
Constructivist Accounts of Culture. Culture as Performance. CRITICAL RACE THEORY. The Prevalence of Racism.
Race as a Legal Construction. Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality. IMMIGRATION LAW AS A SITE FOR CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY. Constructing a National Identity.
48 iv CHAPTER 3 PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF IRB DECISIONS. The IRB’s Structure and Process. Critiques of the IRB’s Decision-Making Process. ANALYSIS OF IRB DECISIONS FROM 2004 TO 2010.
The IRB’s Understanding of its Role. The Cultural Validity of Marriage. Cultural Conceptions of Adoption. Common-Law and Conjugal Partnerships.
Parents and Cultural Duties of Care. Opinion and Documentary Evidence. 117 CHAPTER 4 REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. Knowing What We “Know” About Culture.
Moral Respect and Institutional Humility. 138 v 1 Chapter 1 Introduction Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world, and I have tried to embrace it. Salman Rushdie1 If you are told “they are all this” or “they do this” or “their opinions are these”, withhold your judgment until all the facts are upon you.
Because that land they call “India” goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same amongst that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight. Zadie Smith2 On August 2, 2007, the Immigration Appeal Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) upheld a decision refusing a permanent resident visa to Kuldeep Kaur Goraya. Goraya’s husband, Narinderjit Singh Goraya, had applied to sponsor her as a member of the family class.
The IRB dismissed the appeal based on the finding that the marriage between them was not genuine, and had been entered into primarily to allow Ms. Goraya to immigrate to Canada as a sponsored family member. In refusing the appeal, the IRB Member found that there were several inconsistencies in the evidence given by the husband and wife, both of whom were Sikhs from India. The Member stated that the couple’s testimony regarding the events of their meeting, engagement and subsequent marriage deviated substantially from her understanding of Indian Sikh cultural traditions, and thereby undermined the genuineness of the marriage.
For example, the Member noted that Ms. Goraya, at age 24, was matched for the first time, 1 Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991 (London, Granta Books, 1991) at 394. 2 Zadie Smith, White Teeth (London: Penguin Books, 2000) at 100. 2 whereas the “typical” age of Indian Sikh women at marriage is 21 or 22.4 In addition, the IRB Member remarked that the difference between the husband and wife’s educational levels—Mr.
Goraya held a bachelor’s degree in political science; his wife had a Grade 12 education—was a “significant [departure] from the cultural norms.”5 Finally, the tribunal noted that certain traditional rituals, such as the henna ceremony, were omitted from the marriage celebration, and that the bride was not wearing traditional red bangles.6 I offer this decision as an example of the IRB’s treatment of cultural difference in evaluating applications, and how such treatment can lead to negative determinations of the parties’ credibility. The IRB Member explicitly situates her reasoning within the context of an arranged marriage between Indian Sikhs. She uses these cultural factors to exclude the couple from her perceived understanding of what a Sikh marriage should be like, and thus excludes Ms. Goraya from Canada.
However, the decision raises numerous questions about the IRB Member’s analysis: What is the source of her knowledge about the applicants’ cultural practices and traditions? How does her understanding of these traditions affect her reception of the evidence? What does her reasoning imply about her image of Indian culture, her perception of the shared characteristics of Indian women, and implicitly, her view of mainstream Canadian culture? In this thesis, I undertake an analysis of how administrative decision-makers deal with cultural difference in the context of immigration law. I study recent decisions of the Immigration and Refugee Board in which cultural issues play a role in the Member’s 4 Ibid. A review of recent IRB jurisprudence reveals that most the tribunal’s decisions involving cultural considerations consist of family sponsorship appeals rendered by the IRB’s Immigration Appeal Division. I test the hypothesis that parties seeking to establish the genuineness of their claims must demonstrate that their marriages, adoptions, and other family class relationships were “performed” in accordance with the norms of their culture.
In other words, this thesis examines the possibility that some negative decisions result from a failure to meet the decision-maker’s expectations of what the applicant’s culture looks like. Prior research conducted on the IRB’s decision-making process shows that cultural considerations are vitally important to assessing the credibility of applicants before the IRB. IRB Members often held stereotyped views of minority cultures or demonstrated insufficient knowledge about different cultural contexts, leading to negative credibility decisions.7 Since 2004, “cultural sensitivity” has been included in the list of behavioral competencies that forms part of the IRB’s member selection criteria.8 One purpose of this thesis is to ascertain whether IRB Members have truly displayed “cultural sensitivity” in recent decisions. My work explores how IRB Members handle cultural issues arising from family sponsorship cases, and how their treatment affects their evaluation of the parties’ credibility.
Examining these questions through the lenses of Critical Race Theory and 7 Cécile Rousseau, François Crépeau, Patricia Foxen, and France Houle, “The Complexity of Determining Refugeehood: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Decision-Making Process of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board” (2002) 15 J. 43 at 55 [Rousseau et al.]; François Crépeau and Delphine Nakache, “Critical Spaces in the Canadian Refugee Determination System: 1989–2002” (2008) 20 Int’l J. 8 Janet Cleveland and Delphine Nakache, “Attitudes des commissaires et décisions rendues” (2005) 13 Vivre Ensemble 3 at 5 [Cleveland and Nakache]; Crépeau and Nakache, ibid. 4 theories of cultural difference, I identify ways in which visions of “Other” cultures are articulated by these decision-makers.
Rationale of this Study 1. The IRB’s Regulatory Function My focus on the cultural aspects of IRB decisions is motivated by several considerations. To begin with, administrative tribunals such as the IRB can be regarded as instruments of social, political and economic regulation. The state’s policies and laws are not coherent; rather, they constitute “an ensemble of discourses, rules and practices.”9 The state “never stops talking,” imparting its values and ideologies through different modes of regulation and sanction.10 Like the state, the law also develops in an ad hoc and often contradictory manner.11 Indeed, Kim Lane Scheppele describes legal institutions as “a site of contested meaning” upon which different perspectives struggle for dominance.12 Accordingly, the IRB could be viewed as a terrain upon which newcomers assert their claims to Canadian citizenship, and the state communicates its visions of Canada.
Under this framework, we can recognize individual IRB decisions as expressions of state policy about the composition of Canadian society: whom we should let in and whom we should keep out.13 We can glean insights from these decisions about how “the state” 9 Wendy Brown, “Finding the Man in the State” (1992) 18 Feminist Studies 1 at 12. 10 Janine Brodie, “Canadian Women, Changing State Forms, and Public Policy” in Women and Canadian Public Policy (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996) 1 at 13. 11 Carol Smart, Feminism and the Power of Law (London: Routledge, 1989) at 97-98. 12 Kim Lane Scheppele, “Manners of Imagining the Real” (1994) 19 Law & Soc.
13 For example, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada report indicates that the government intended to grant 11,200 family sponsorship visas to parents and grandparents of Canadian citizens and permanent residents in 2011, versus its target of 16,200 visas in 2010: Douglas Todd, “’Be honest’: Most parents will never immigrate 5 regards minority cultures, and how it perceives mainstream Canadian identity and values. IRB decisions thus provide a rich backdrop for examining intersecting questions of culture, race, gender, and national identity in the state’s dealings with new immigrants. Identity Construction Moreover, decisions rendered by IRB adjudicators contribute to our understanding of how cultural identities are constructed. As Sonia Lawrence argues, doctrinally insignificant cases such as lower court and tribunal decisions are major sites “for the construction and reproduction of race, the practice of race-ing, and the furthering of racist projects.”14 Textual or rhetorical analyses of such cases can help to illuminate problematic representations of minority cultures, as well as visions of the mainstream culture.
Thus, studying the treatment of cultural difference by IRB Members hearing sponsorship cases reveals the ways in which racial and cultural identities are shaped by the legal system. I opened this chapter with two quotations. The first reflects the view that all cultures are influenced and shaped by interaction with other groups, particularly within the context of immigration. The second emphasizes that cultures are inherently diverse, not homogenous.
In a multicultural and multiethnic nation such as Canada, it is especially important for public decision-making bodies to avoid “misrecognition” of diverse cultures to Canada” The Vancouver Sun (26 February 2011), online: Vancouver Sun <http://communities.com/vancouversun/blogs/thesearch/archive/2011/02/26/be-honest-most- parents-will-never-immigrate-to-canada. Lawrence, “Cultural (in)Sensitivity: The Dangers of a Simplistic Approach to Culture in the Courtroom (2001) 13 Cdn J. 6 through stereotyping and marginalization.15 Courtroom and tribunal decisions that propagate essentialist or overly simplistic images of minority cultures can inflict harm upon people of different backgrounds.