‘Immigration to Canada’ sometimes takes perplex turn.

It does not matter if you are a queer refugee or a same-sex couple that is still finding a place to settle, you are destined to have to get personal. If you have been prosecuted throughout your life on grounds of your sexuality then it gets really tough for you to come face to face with a government officer and explain exactly, what your situation is.

Lauren Dale, of Atlantic Refugee & Immigration Services Society, said that there are many occasions when people who make refugee claim have to suppress their sexual orientation for long in order to be socially acceptable.

Immigration and Refugee lawyer, Lori Hill said that even if a refugee gathers courage to claim, then also the outcome depends on the country he or she is hailing from. He explained this by saying that there are still many countries where gays are still considered illegal. Although, in various countries, these types of laws have been taken off the law books, still you have to deal heavily with the society and chances are that you will be caught in no-man land.

Around the year 1994, Canada immigration system have opened doors for the applications from the same-sex families on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, after it got the approval of the ministry. The new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that was introduced in the year 2002 formally accepted and recognized common law for all and specifically mentioned same-sex relationships. After this, the next step towards this was the recognition of the same-sex marriages that came into existence with the 2005 federal marriage law.

Ever since laws were made favorable to the same-sex couples, there has been an increase in the practices among couple of two nationalities that are usually American and Canadian, says Blair Hodgman, an immigration lawyer. She said that in the United States, same-sex relationships will not be recognized at all and therefore, a Canadian-American couple of the same-sex, who are willing to settle down in any of the two countries, are left with no other choice but Canada.

Blair Hodgman, who herself has a family of two women, had also been traveling from one place to another before settling together in Canada.

But still, there are rooms for improvement. One important thing that’s needed to be thought is the fact that there is no place for a polyamorous relationship in the law book. And the facts that there are not any acknowledgements of any gender in the official papers need to be looked upon and thus, transgendered folks must specify in the paper works whether they are male or female.