Until Citizenship Separates Us: How U.S. Immigrants Marry For Green Card
'21.08.2019'
Source: vice.com
The hardest part is making your marriage look real, which includes joint bank accounts, joint photos, and having to convince the immigration officer that you truly love each other.
These days, most couples share photos online, but Garrett and Evelyn (these are their fictitious names) have a personal photo folder for two, writes Belinda Kay for vice.com. In one of the photos they are facing each other and say “yes” in the city hall. On the other, they are sitting on a bench near their house, her hand in his hand, her head on his shoulder, and they are both smiling: a perfect picture of a young happy couple.
But Garett and Evelyn, in fact, are not at all a couple. The photographs, along with other “evidence”, such as a joint bank account and a rental agreement signed by both of them, were carefully fabricated to make their fictitious marriage look real. If they are caught, they can be charged with criminal offenses.
Garrett is a United States citizen born and raised in New York. For two years now he has had a girl with whom he lives in New York. Evelyn is from East Asia, she came to the USA to study and married Garrett, after the validity of the study visa expired and she could not get a work visa. The Green Card Marriage allowed Evelyn to obtain a legal residence permit in New York.
Marriage with a U.S. citizen is one of the easiest ways for immigrants to get a green card (a quarter of all green cards issued in the United States are for spouses of American citizens), and according to those who did it, it is very easy to make a fake marriage. Only at the beginning of this year in Los Angeles, a couple was arrested, who arranged for more than 100 fictitious marriages for money. And although it’s easy to cheat, the fines for such actions are serious: getting married in order to circumvent immigration laws can be accused of visa fraud, harboring a foreigner and criminal conspiracy.
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Evelyn knew the law, but decided to take a chance. She and Garrett met six years ago, working in the hotel industry, Garrett was legally employed, and Evelyn was paid from under the floor. One day she asked Garrett if he knew someone who could be willing to marry her for a green card.
"I'll do it," Garrett said.
Garrett heard about those who did this, and he decided to go for it because Evelyn was his friend and he wanted to help her. Plus the money was a good bonus.
“I gave it to her for half the normal price,” Garrett says. "It usually costs $ 20, but she paid me $ 000." (According to unconfirmed reports, the average cost ranges from $ 10 to $ 000).
She paid in cash, giving Garrett the first half of the payment after the couple officially signed. After that, she sorted out all the papers: she opened a general bank account, changed Garrett's mailing address so that it was the same as hers, and added a joint telephone line. He received the second part of the money after the most nervous part - an immigration interview.
When applications or applications are submitted to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), applicants may be verified to verify their veracity. According to Jim McKinney, USCIS Public Relations Officer, in some cases, questionnaires can be approved without interviews if the relationship seems fairly sincere.
So it was in the case of Joe and Libby (their real names are not), which were married when Joe was 21, and Libby 18. They were young, but they had to act quickly: Joe's one-year temporary visa expired several years ago, and he was still in the United States. Joe, a native of Bulgaria, could not imagine returning back.
They met, but most likely would not have tied their fortunes at such a young age, if not for Joe’s visa dilemma, the relationship was real. They were not invited to an interview with an immigration officer.
“There was nothing to complain about in our relationship,” says Libby. "I think what USCIS is looking at is the same age group, speaking the same language, staying at the same address, and the stories and behaviors found in any healthy relationship."
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Couples like Garrett and Evelyn, whose profiles may seem suspicious, should come to the USCIS office to meet with the immigration officer. To prepare for the interview, Garrett and Evelyn made detailed notes about each other - features that only real couples can know, for example, on which side of the bed each of them is sleeping, or information about relatives from the opposite side.
“I went to her, took a lot of pictures, for example, where all the little things are located,” Garrett recalls. - I photographed the bathroom in case they ask me what color her toothbrush is - all that kind of bullshit. I just wrote it down and studied it by the day I went to the interview. "
USCIS does not store information about how many failures were issued, but according to statistics compiled by the New York Times back in the 2009 year, of the 241 154 applications filed, only 506 were denied fraud. It is impossible to establish the number of fictitious marriages due to which it was possible to obtain a green card. And although the number of applications that have been refused is small, the consequences are serious: there are civil-administrative and criminal consequences of fictitious marriages; the foreigner is automatically deported. In such cases, the prosecution is controlled by the Department of Justice and its U.S. attorneys' offices, and as a result, a person can be sentenced to five years in prison and fined 250 000 dollars.
In addition to the information obtained during the interview, the Fraud and Homeland Security Directorate may also receive evidence that the marriage is fictitious. According to McKinney, if a couple fails in an interview or suspicions arise, USCIS may conduct an administrative investigation, which “may include, but is not limited to, a visit to the couple’s house, as well as an interview with their neighbors and colleagues.”
In the case of Garrett and Evelyn, everything went smoothly, Evilin even gave a visa for ten years. Garrett also had no problems with his real girlfriend Anna, whom he lives with and whom he has been dating for about two years.
“She knew everything because I was 'married' before we started dating,” says Garrett. “I didn't come up with this in the middle of our two-year relationship, saying," Oh, I'm going to do that. " There is an understanding. I don't meet or go out with my wife all the time. I rarely see her. I don't think this is a problem. "
Garrett and Evelyn have been married for almost three years, and soon Evelyn will apply for citizenship. After that, they plan to get a divorce.
Libby and Joe, who have been married for five years, say that the process requires a lot of money and time, lawyers, interviews and collecting papers in order for Joe to apply for citizenship, but today they have a happy, even relatively normal, relationship.
“This is something I couldn't prepare for,” Libby said. "This topic is usually hushed up, there are no books or magazines on it from which you can get useful advice, for example, how to explain to your relatives why you are so urgently married."
But according to her, in the end, it was worth it to be with him, and for him, to be in America.
