Green card marriage

Green card marriage is a neologism that refers to the phenomenon of a marriage of convenience between a legal resident of a country and a person who would be ineligible for residency but for being married to a resident.

Description

The term derives from the availability of work permits ("Green cards") for spouses of legal residents in the United States, where marriage is one of the fastest and most sure ways of obtaining legal residence. Marriages, if legitimate, entitle the spouse to live and work in the United States, as in most other countries. In the United States, 2.3 million marriage visas were approved from 1998 through 2007, representing 25% of all green cards in 2007. Even if the non-resident spouse was previously an illegal immigrant, marriage entitles the spouse to residency, generally without the waiting time required for persons caught being in the United States illegally.

See also
AK-1 visa

The practice is illegal in the United States if the marriage itself is fraudulent. A marriage that is solely for purposes of obtaining legal residence is considered a sham, and is a crime in the United States for both participants. A 2008 study by the Center for Immigration Studies cited consular officials who estimated that between 5% and 30% of all marriages between American residents and foreign nationals were fraudulent, but that very few of these marriages were detected or acted upon.

Many of the arrangements are simple transactions between two individuals, often in exchange for money paid to the legal resident. In other cases the legal resident is an unwitting victim of a fraudulent marriage. In other cases the marriages are arranged by criminal enterprises, sometimes involving the complicity of corrupt immigration officials who accept payment for describing the marriage as legitimate in immigration paperwork.

In popular culture

The film, Green Card, is a romantic comedy that portrays a green card marriage. The film The Proposal portrays a similar marriage of convenience designed to allow the main female character to stay in the United States. In the show Parks and Recreation, the character Tom Haverford entered into a green card marriage with Wendy, his Canadian college friend.

 See also

Immigration to the United States,

 Illegal immigration to the United States,

Green card marriage ,

Marriage in the United States ,

History of civil marriage in the United States ,

Divorce in the United States,

AK-1 visa

(source:wikipedia)