Immigrant predicament

>> Feds refuse to let Canadian sailor's Cuban wife visit the city

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

As a sailor staying on a ship that's long been docked in the harbour at the foot of McGill Street, Fred Dalton knows how waves can provide a sense of motion even when the craft is going nowhere. It's a feeling he's also been experiencing in his quest to get federal immigration authorities to grant his wife a tourist visa to visit him: there's a lot of turbulence but no progress.

Dalton, 58, met his wife Yolaisy "Julie" Rodriguez Garcia, 28, five years ago in Santa Clara, Cuba. Indeed, Rodriguez Garcia has pinned a large portrait of the anti-capitalist on her living room wall. "She believes in her country and the socialistic way of life," says Dalton of the woman he married in June. Rodriguez Garcia is devoted to her homeland and Dalton plans on joining her in Cuba for the rest of his days. "It's one place you can go in the universe that doesn't have any achy-breaky American line dances and McDonald's--and you know, I love the old cars," he says.

Before he sets sail to the Caribbean for good, Dalton wants his bride to come here to share a formal wedding at the newly refurbished mariner's house in the Old Port. "I want a Christian wedding, in which the minister says 'Do you take this woman to be your bride?'" In this effort Dalton jumped through all the right bureaucratic hoops to get her a tourist visa, penning a letter of invitation, paying to have it translated and dealing with Canadian consular authorities--an effort which he says cost him $540.

After what he interpreted as tacit verbal acceptance by the Canadian immigration authorities in Havana, he sent out 35 wedding invitations for the celebration planned on December 15. But the wedding is off, as Immigration Canada has recently informed the seaman that his wife might only be allowed to set temporary foot in the True North if he opts to sponsor her as a Canadian citizen.

The bizarre boondoggle has Dalton estimating that what he thought would be a mere formality will force him to pony up an estimated $3,000 in landed immigrant fees, plus wait another year before his wife could come to visit the city under the cross. "They're pushing me in places that I don't want to go. I just want her to come and have a wedding here, visit my family and then go back," he says. "She doesn't want to have to stay in Canada. If I were to sponsor her, I'd have to lie on the application because she doesn't want to become a Canadian citizen."

Canada's seductive lure

The problem, it seems, is that Canadian Immigration doubts Dalton's wife will remain faithful to the Castro's Cuba after seeing the miracle of consumer culture. "If a person wants to visit Canada they have to demonstrate that they are coming here for temporary purposes and they'll be leaving at the end," says Susan Scarlett of Immigration and Citizenship Canada. "And that they can cover the costs of travel, that they have ties where they're living and that they'll return and continue their life."

Even then, chances of Dalton getting what he calls his "romantic wedding" here are slim. Canada gave the nod to 4,500 of the 5,000 Cubans who applied for tourist visas last year but refused almost half of the 300 Cubans who applied to become landed immigrants. A variety of criteria, which Scarlett refuses to identify, are employed to assess applicants. They can be accepted or refused at the discretion of the interviewer, in this case, a Cuban subcontracted by the Canadian Embassy in Havana.

The lovesick Latina's predicament could become increasingly common in the new Canadian order. "They're worried since September 11 about security clearance from countries, including Cuba," says local immigrant consultant Mitchell Brownstein. He figures that Canada likes the tighter security checks on those who apply to move. "Unlike applicants for landed immigrant status, those who apply as a visitor don't get fingerprinted and checked as thoroughly for a police record through the government authority."

Dalton's desultory conclusion is that Canada is cashing in while holding out false hope to Cubans who believe they have a shot at coming here. He says that while in Havana he repeatedly met young Cubans who gave $57 US to the Canadian authorities--a huge sum for Cuban workers--for applications that get tossed out with little more than a cursory glance. "These people are told to reapply over and over again, that's the sad part about it. The Canadian Embassy should just post a sign up there in Havana saying, 'If you're young and or divorced or don't own property, you won't be accepted.'"