What Defines a Sham Marriage?
A recent story on Fox News concerns a Lebanese man convicted of entering into a sham marriage with an American citizen in order to get permission to stay in the U.S. What made the story newsworthy was that the woman was later an aide to Senator Harry Reid. There is no clear evidence that Reid knew about the case until recently, when the story broke—at which point the aide apparently quit or was fired. I expect that his opponent in the current election will argue either that he knew, that he should have known, or that hiring someone who would do such a thing is evidence of poor judgment. Very likely Reid's people are now combing through the public records in search of some similar misdeed by an employee of the other side, assuming they don't already have evidence of one in stock and ready.
What struck me about the case was not the political element but the question of what, for purposes of immigration, makes a marriage a sham. Married couples usually live together, usually sleep together, usually share income and meals. But none of those is a defining characteristic of marriage. If a couple goes through the usual legal formalities, what more do they have to do in order that their marriage count as real?
It's a serious issue in the context of immigration. Eighty years ago, when marriage was a more serious and divorce a more difficult matter and the reputation for female virginity a significant asset on the marriage market, marrying someone you didn't love or plan to live with was a costly way of getting him or her permission to immigrate, although I expect it occasionally happened. In our current society, those costs are a great deal less. Permitting anyone married to a U.S. citizen to live in the U.S., perhaps to become a citizen, looks like a yawning gap in the barriers that the U.S. puts up against would-be immigrants. But how, given the difficulty of defining what makes a marriage real, can that gap be closed?
Apparently the INS has an answer to that question. Anyone know what it is?
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com
At 8:33 PM, October 25, 2010, Anonymous Anonymous said...
Yes, it is based on the capricious judgment of a low level, poorly trained, little motivated government functionary guided by shaky rules, subject to wide interpretations, based on flaky, culturally parochial evidence.
daviddfriedman.blogspot.com
Also see
Do You Take This Immigrant?
nytimes.com
Personally I don't believe in the idea of a sham marriage, except in terms of bigamy, or pretending your married when you really are not. If you go through the legal requirements of marriage, then I don't think the fact you did it for immigration purposes makes it a sham, or should result in legal punishment (other than having to later get a divorce, or just be married to someone you don't now, and perhaps never, had a real relationship with.
In the non-legal sense of marriage it is in a sense a sham (also in a non-legal sense), but so are quite a few marriages not done for immigration purposes. The government can say that it will allow immigration of people married to Americans that it wouldn't allow in if they where not married, but IMO its not properly any of the government's business if you really love the person or not, or if you have sex with them. |
