- I hear that you are leaving us.
- Yes, I'm moving to the Netherlands.
- So you two are finally getting married?
- No, there's no need. I can immigrate as a "partner".
- But then where is it written that he must provide you with a comfortable home? And what allowances you'll have? And what he has to provide for you to go home to visit your family?
- Well western marriages are really wishy-washy about those sorts of things anyways. All we do in western marriages is vow to love, honour, and cherish each other.
- Really? But that doesn't mean anything. Where are your guarantees? Where is your contract?
- All a western marriage contract says is that you have exchanged your vows in front of witnesses and that you are now married.
- Where are the vows written? How can you verify that they have been met?
- Umm. They're not listed in the contract, it's only mentioned that there were vows exchanged. I think it's the act of saying them in front of your friends and family that makes you accountable to them.
- Speaking them in front of people? But what are the grounds for divorce if the contract is so ambiguous and undocumented? What is the guarantee that your partner can afford to be married?
- Well, for my immigration purposes my partner has to take responsibility for me financially and legally for 5 years as my guarantor, and has to prove his income and employment and status as a citizen. But as far as I know, in a marriage there are no such requirements.
- Yes, I'm moving to the Netherlands.
- So you two are finally getting married?
- No, there's no need. I can immigrate as a "partner".
- But then where is it written that he must provide you with a comfortable home? And what allowances you'll have? And what he has to provide for you to go home to visit your family?
- Well western marriages are really wishy-washy about those sorts of things anyways. All we do in western marriages is vow to love, honour, and cherish each other.
- Really? But that doesn't mean anything. Where are your guarantees? Where is your contract?
- All a western marriage contract says is that you have exchanged your vows in front of witnesses and that you are now married.
- Where are the vows written? How can you verify that they have been met?
- Umm. They're not listed in the contract, it's only mentioned that there were vows exchanged. I think it's the act of saying them in front of your friends and family that makes you accountable to them.
- Speaking them in front of people? But what are the grounds for divorce if the contract is so ambiguous and undocumented? What is the guarantee that your partner can afford to be married?
- Well, for my immigration purposes my partner has to take responsibility for me financially and legally for 5 years as my guarantor, and has to prove his income and employment and status as a citizen. But as far as I know, in a marriage there are no such requirements.
In a country where business runs on word rather than contracts, where million dollar deals are made on handshakes alone, and multinational companies risk everything on their relationships with just a few key clients, the attitude in the Emirates towards marriage is quite different. I was generally met with complete shock by my Arab colleagues in Abu Dhbai when they learnt that I was relocating to the Netherlands without any marital "guarantees".
The attitude in the Netherlands seems quite different towards marriage. Everyone in the Netherlands seems to be partnered with someone from abroad -- there are no Dutch people married to Dutch people in Amsterdam. And even for the ex-pats, it's much easier to immigrate as a partner than as a wife/husband!
- It was such a nightmare doing the paperwork to immigrate here.
- Really? My whole immigration process took a total of 3 days, and then I received my papers less than two weeks later.
- We got married in Canada, and so we had to apply for a long form marriage certificate, and then that needed to be sent to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs to be stamped, and then they had to send it to the Dutch Embassy in Ottawa to be legalised, and only then was it an acceptable document to the Dutch Immigration Authorities. It took months!
- You should have gotten not married instead. It's much faster.
- How do you do that?
- On Monday you go to the Canadian Embassy in the Hague and get certificates saying that you are not married. On Tuesday you register at the City Hall as "co-habitators running a joint household", and then on Wednesday you go to the Dutch Immigration Office and sign a paper saying that you're "partners". It only takes 3 days, rather than 3 months.
- But don't you have to prove your relationship? Or be living together for more than 6 months?
- We had every boarding pass from trips together and visiting each other over the past 2 years, and plenty of other documentation. They never asked to see it. And on the form it only stated that we had been officially co-locating for 3 days.
The best part is that when we went to the Canadian Embassy to fetch certificates saying that we were not married, the women who presented them to us said "Congratulations!".
- Um. Thanks?
- Good luck to the two of you then.
Had she just congratulated us on being not married? She must have recently divorced, or be someone who is against marriage. Then it was explained to me that Canadians who get married in the Netherlands must apply for the same certificate of being "not married" first, so it's more likely that she was being presumptuous rather than supporting our not married status. In any case, we went out for drinks to celebrate the completion of my immigration process, and the benefits of being not married.
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