Thread: Can couple prove they're really in love?

Can couple prove they're really in love?
Married refugee awaits ruling on immigration

January 14, 2007
BY ESTHER J. CEPEDA Staff Reporter
A married Chicago couple trying to complete what is usually routine paperwork to get legal residency have hit a hurdle: They have to prove they're really in love.
They've been together three years and married for a year and a half, friends and relatives confirm, but their unconventional story has raised a few red flags at the immigration office, and it's keeping them from knowing whether Williette Whitt, 22, will get to stay in the country or be deported to her native Liberia.

Marriage fraud is rising in Chicago and nationwide as numbers of those seeking permanent legal status grow. In 2005, 259,144 of the 1.1 million legal immigrants became permanent legal residents after marrying U.S. citizens and waiting the required number of years. Another 208,758 had their conditional status lifted, according them full rights of residency, records show.

Williette Whitt's immigration lawyers say they think the Whitts are paying the price for others' fraud.


» Click to enlarge image

The Whitts may be paying the price for others' fraud.
(Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times)
Entered U.S. on medical visa
Before she got married, Williette Whitt, as an African refugee, already had overcome nearly insurmountable odds: strife in her homeland of Liberia and a rare disease that left her temporarily blind and prone to seizures. The ray of hope in her life was falling in love with and marrying her U.S.-born husband, Andre Whitt, now 26.
Williette Whitt arrived in Chicago in January 1998 at age 14 on a medical visa to receive care and be studied for a rare disease at the University of Chicago. She joined her grandparents in northwest suburban Hanover Park. They are here legally on refugee visas.

Williette Whitt earned nursing assistant certification and in late 2003 met Andre Whitt, who is from Maywood. They married in May 2005.

Everything was going well until Williette Whitt missed her winter 2005 interview for renewal of her "temporary protected status" visa because she was severely ill in the hospital, according to Maria Bernal, an immigration attorney she consulted.

Later, when the couple interviewed for conditional residency, officials at the Chicago office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under pressure from increased post-9/11 scrutiny, started questioning their marriage.

They were young, and they lived with her grandmother, so they had no lease in their name. They had opened a joint checking account days before the interview, and they had very few wedding pictures. These are all red flags for officers in charge of determining whether two people are married in good faith, according to Robert Blackwood, the Adjudications Branch chief of the Citizenship and Immigration Services in Chicago.


Schemes uncovered here
Marriage fraud schemes have been uncovered all over the country. In Chicago, Sami Abuhamatto, a Jordanian pilot, was deported in 2004 after being convicted of paying a U.S. citizen to marry him so he could apply for permanent residency. In September 2005, Remigijus Adomaitis, a Lithuanian man living in Northbrook, was convicted and deported in a Chicago-based marriage fraud ring.
Usually the procedure to get residency for a spouse is simple: A legal immigrant marries a U.S.-born citizen, and once they've decided they will reside in the United States long-term, the citizen petitions for the immigrant spouse to become a legal permanent resident -- in other words, get a "green card."

The couple talk with an immigration officer, who makes a ruling on whether the marriage is genuine. From there, the immigrant spouse gets a "conditional" green card. After two more years of marriage, the couple can go through another interview to apply for permanent residency.

That's where the legal process has been at a standstill for months for the Whitts.

Those who know the couple have no doubts. "I know the ups and downs they go through as a couple. You don't go through that unless you're in love," said the groom's father, also named Andre Whitt.

No matter what happens, they'll be together, said Williette's husband. "If she's gotta go back, I'll go with her."

ecepeda@suntimes.com



http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2097 ... 14.article

I guess we'll never really know for sure, but if I had an important interview, I am sure that my husband would contact them for me...unless he wasn't around(?) Hmmm...

but if I had an important interview, I am sure that my husband would contact them for me.

Ya....I find it amazing how many people "forget" such an important thing. There's tons who are illegally that for one reason or another missed these vital meetings. I'd think I'd remember something like that.