Thread: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon

"Most relationships between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate,"

So why the worry? Keep doing what you are doing and keep the process as tight as possible. This seems to be the way USCIS and Homeland Security does it's job. Make it as hard as possible on the people that are doing the right thing. That way everyone complains and it seems obvious they are doing all they can. Yet, who is watching our borders? Why is it so easy to just walk across and stay as long as you want? why is it so easy to get a job, legal documentation and government benefits? Why do we keep insisting on giving these law breakers a pathway to citizneship and a place in line ahead of those who have done the right thing?

The report states that the immigrant spouse becomes eligible for U.S. citizenship three years after the conditional status is removed. When this happens, they are allowed to petition to bring immediate family members into the U.S. without a waiting period.

As already stated, "Most relationships between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate,â€

Originally Posted by Captainron

Originally Posted by jshhmr

My brother in law married a girl back in August so she could get citizenship. She is originally from India, then went to Canada, and her father who works with my brother in law paid him $5000 plus a laptop to marry his daughter for citizenship. They aren't very careful either becuase they don't have an address together, nor a bank account etc. I told him that WHEN he gets caught it's his own damn fault!

Why don't you report them both?

I am not sure how to do it. I would absolutely have to remain anonymous becuase if my wife found out I reported her brother, I would be sleeping on the couch for a year. Does anyone know how I can report this without them knowing who did it?

Originally Posted by bigtex

"Most relationships between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate,"

So why the worry? Keep doing what you are doing and keep the process as tight as possible. This seems to be the way USCIS and Homeland Security does it's job. Make it as hard as possible on the people that are doing the right thing. That way everyone complains and it seems obvious they are doing all they can. Yet, who is watching our borders? Why is it so easy to just walk across and stay as long as you want? why is it so easy to get a job, legal documentation and government benefits? Why do we keep insisting on giving these law breakers a pathway to citizneship and a place in line ahead of those who have done the right thing?

[quote:2hsdga7n]The report states that the immigrant spouse becomes eligible for U.S. citizenship three years after the conditional status is removed. When this happens, they are allowed to petition to bring immediate family members into the U.S. without a waiting period.

[/quote:2hsdga7n]

As already stated, "Most relationships between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate,â€

Inside Today's Bulletin
Marriage Fraud: Big Problem
By Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
12/03/2008

A report by former U.S. consular officer David Seminara indicates marriage fraud remains an unresolved facet of recent efforts to strengthen enforcement of immigration laws.

Foreigners who get legal residency by marrying American citizens increased in number by more than 100 percent since 1985, reaching 274,358 in 2007. More than 2.3 million have done so since 1998. In 2006 and 2007, almost twice as many foreigners became legal residents via marriage to U.S. citizens as had gained green cards for employment purposes.

Mr. Seminara said his professional experience indicates many of these new immigrants include mail-order brides, participants in arranged marriages, money-motivated "cash-for-vows" spouses and other fraudulent marriage partners. He said, however, he finds the issue a challenge to parse because the vast majority of immigrants' marriage partners are legitimate.

"My experience as a consular officer and the experience of other officers ... the numerous arrests of those involved in marriage fraud schemes; and the hundreds, if not thousands, of Web sites that exist solely for the purpose of arranging scam marriages all indicate that marriage fraud is a serious problem that needs to be addressed if we are to implement any kind of meaningful immigration reform in the United States," the former foreign-service official wrote in a backgrounder for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

He said the consular officers he interviewed for the report estimated that anywhere from 5 to 30 percent of those who get green cards based on their marriages to legal U.S. residents have sham relationships with their spouses. And the record indicates some of those so exposed have been terrorists. An earlier CIS report examining the activities of 94 terrorists who resided in the U.S. between the early 1990s and the mid 2000s stated at least nine of those participated in spurious marriages.

"The use of fraudulent marriage petitions is prevalent among international terrorists, including members of al-Qaida," Mr. Seminara wrote.

His report said foreign men, some of them radical Islamists, sometimes coerce American women into marrying them to gain a path to legal residency in America. He witnessed firsthand this kind of scheme working in Macedonia, where a Kosovar man intimidated an Albanian-American woman into marrying him so he could come to the U.S. When asked to process the husband's visa request, he ordered authorities to remove the man from the office and facilitated the wife's return home.

Mr. Seminara recommends a number of reforms to minimize the marriage-fraud problem, including ending fiancée visas, abolishing waivers for those seeking admission on the basis of marriage if they have committed crimes and creating a national marriage-registration database. He said these reforms are long shots for enactment given that restrictionists currently have scant power in the federal government.

"Unfortunately, I'm not very optimistic about the prospects for the kind of immigration reform that I'm hoping for here," he said. "I think that politicians make the calculation that the vast majority of American voters aren't going to vote on the immigration issue."

He said his favored policy will only come to fruition if low-immigration advocates successfully articulate their position as at once pro-enforcement and pro-immigrant.

Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us

http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cf ... 6361&rfi=8

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article-3788--0-0.html

Originally Posted by jshhmr

Originally Posted by Captainron

Originally Posted by jshhmr

My brother in law married a girl back in August so she could get citizenship. She is originally from India, then went to Canada, and her father who works with my brother in law paid him $5000 plus a laptop to marry his daughter for citizenship. They aren't very careful either becuase they don't have an address together, nor a bank account etc. I told him that WHEN he gets caught it's his own damn fault!

Why don't you report them both?

I am not sure how to do it. I would absolutely have to remain anonymous becuase if my wife found out I reported her brother, I would be sleeping on the couch for a year. Does anyone know how I can report this without them knowing who did it?

That kind of information is almost always confidential. Many of us have complained to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and believe me, they really don't care to divulge your name to anyone.
Call: 1-866-DHS-2-ICE; that's the national tipline