Marriage for Citizenship
 

Would you marry someone just so they could become an American citizen??

heck no.

It depends...

... there was a super cute foreign exchange student in high school. If I didn't have a significant other, I would definitely marry Mr. Super Cute Foreign Exchange Student :p We got along very well, and he's really nice & funny, so I think it would work out OK :p Plus we've kept in touch since then, so it's not like I don't know him.

If it was some random person though, I wouldn't.

Maybe, depending on the person's reasons and how close I was to him.

Nope bc there would go any chances at a TS Clearance.

I would.

My father did...and I thought that was a great idea. :p

If the pre-nup was clear, and the cash payment made to my account in the Caymans was big enough.

Did anyone see that episode of Will & Grace where Jack married Rosario?? Does anyone know how long you have to stay married for the person to remain a citizen??

If I was truly in love in someone who wasn't a Canadian citizen, but my fiance is Canadian, so this is a moot point... :p

I wouldn't..

But I know some people (immigrants) who have or would marry for greencard purposes :-)

A sister of mine did. She made the mistake of visiting his native country with him, where their laws are ENTIRELY different from ours.

She's dead now.


No, I wouldn't even consider it for a moment.

My cousin did -- and she almost ended up the way honey's sister did. It turns out he and most of his family were drug dealers...she visited his country with him and couldn't leave. She still is not able to get a divorce from him, so although she hasn't seen him or spoken to him in over ten years, they're still married. We are just thankful that we were able to get her back.

The lady who fixed my hair for my wedding had married someone so he could become a citizen, and when he cheated on her, she had him deported. :)

I would not even consider it.

I don't know. I love foreign women to begin with, but doing it solely so they could become american???? They'd have to look really good on top of giving me at least 40,000$ upfront. They have to live with you for two years before they can get a divorce, plus you have immigration barking up your ass constantly. The girl would also have to be tall and give me my tall kid I want......then I think I could maybe do it. She'd also have to sign a pre-nup as well as giving up the rights to whatever child the two of us had, giving me full custody should we ever split.

hahaha I love Will & Grace. The funniest epsiode concerning the Jack/Rosario marriage was when he had to convince immigration services that he was really in love with her and that's why they married :p

It's unfortunate that many people know loved ones who have had bad experiences with this.

Many of you know about my familiy and how my mom and dad had an "arranged" marriage. See, my mom wasn't some random chick that needed to come to America to get her citizenship. My father was a tenant living at my granduncle's and aunt's house. He lived there for many years before he met my mom. In the 1960s and 1970s many Filipinos immigrated to Hawaii in waves because laws were revised, making it easier to come here.

If he had married her prior to her coming here, it would have been years before the paperwork would have gone through the red tape. If you petition someone as a fiance/e...they're on the plane, just like that.

I don't know how long you'd have to be married to the person before being able to get a divorce. The arrangement was to divorce ASAP after mom got her citizenship. Thankfully something happened...and six years later..I came along.

As a result of my dad's kindness and unselfishness, my mom's been able to bring her parents, her two brothers, and THEIR families over from the Philippines in the past 32 years and all have since started new lives here.

A girl who lived on my floor said her best friend married a guy from the "old country" a week after high school graduation. She told me it was basically so he could stay here. They divorced about a year after.

OTW, I am truly happy that your family's experience worked out so well - and a generation or two ago, I think many such arrangements did. I can personally name three such couples who married, then had a child in each country, to establish dual citizenship.

I purposely left a LOT of details out of the example I gave - including the chill that runs down my spine each time I think of that dear, wonderful sister who had such a wild sense of humor and joi de vivre. Some day, I may be able to tell the whole story, but right now, it still hurts too much. My New Member class (and the one after mine) were instrumental in our chapter's Spirit Award being named in her memory. I best stop while I'm still making a little bit of sense...

False. Spoken from someone who has one.

OMG...that sounds like the "Not Without My Daughter" situation... Terrible. (I assume that he, or his family, killed her?) :eek:

I'm sorry to hear this. :( It's stories like this that would make me say definitely not. Not everyone gets a happy ending.

My uncle did and he's rich now. She turned out to be from a very wealthy family in Mexico.

Exactly. More like executed, though - he's a "hero" for killing her.

The last letter I have from her was smuggled out of the country, and at the end, in little teeny-tiny letters incorporated into a design, she had written not to ever let someone you love do what she did. She was trying to contact the Consulate, and having no success, even though she had been tricked into "visiting". She definitely feared for her life, and (I'll never forget this part) said, "DO NOT EVER give up your American citizenship, or go to a country where it can be forfieted through marriage!"

I heard on Christmas Eve of that year of her execution, for disobeying her husband.

Honeychile, I am sorry for your loss. That's messed up and I hope karma comes back and kicks the sumbitch's ass! :mad:

Would I marry someone just for citizenship? HELL NO! Mr. 1228's first wife married him for a meal ticket, FORGED his name on the immigration docs to get her parents over here. He learned that lesson.

I did marry someone from another country, but we waited until after we got married to file paperwork.

This is so important. It wouldn't have mattered what citizenship you have. As soon as as woman sets foot on certain foreign soils, she's regarded as property.

I am so sorry for your loss. Sadly, she is among MANY women who have experienced this. (I read "Not Without My Daughter" and the book that Betty Mahmoody published afterwards...I think it was called "For the Love of a Child"). There were French women, German women, etc., all stuck in countries that didn't recognize their citizenship. They were "property" of their husbands.

I treated Betty's son for a severely broken leg and arm when doing my fieldwork for Occupational Therapy. It was right when her book was coming out and I met that little girl. Her eyes were empty, haunted and she looked completely traumatized. I will never forget the look in her eyes. Incidentally, my copy of the book was signed in their living room. Seeing them and reading what they went through definitely made an impact on me.

/hijack

Dee

not a chance in hell would i do it.

for me, marriage is about love. i plan on marrying once (hopefully!!!) and that's it. i'm nobody's meal ticket or green card. i want to live my life with a man i want to have kids and a life with, not some stranger who is using me.

When illegal Hispanics started coming to Georgia about 12-15 yers ago, a lot of them married the trashiest, meanest women they could to get citizenship.(Nobody else would marry these women.) After getting it, they usually split, leaving gorgeous children behind. I remember remarking to a colleague back in the day that these babies would be some of our worst problems in school when they hit middle school. They would be raised in some of the worst trailer parks in Georgia with horrible moms and neighbors.

:( Unfortunately, this prediction has come true. I would say that at least a third of the suspended kids currently in our school system are half Hispanic and nobody knows where the dad is. Most of the moms have split too, leaving grandparents to raise the kids.

My sister actually did this. She and her South American dude were supposedly going to get married anyway, so they went ahead and got married so he could come here but now they have to keep this a secret from all the grandmothers and aunts in the family or they'd have a fit.

Don't know if I'd do it, though. I think not.

Re: Marriage for Citizenship
 

No, but I think people think it's automatic and instantaneous that you give citizenship to someone when you marry them. All you get or can get for a foreigner is the ability to apply for permanent resident status within 90 days of marriage. Then they have to wait 3 years or so to get naturalized. It's a 3+ year commitment and they do treat this process seriously. Kind of funny since recent reports show over 10 million illegal immigrants are working and living in this country. So I guess the question is why bother getting citizenship?

Heck no.

I have a friend who is going to do this, though. I think it's a bad idea, but she will have none of our naysaying.

Re: Marriage for Citizenship
 

they changed that now, accordding to news I heard somewhere, but, I would marry someone for Eruopean citizenship. Then I'd have 2 out of 3.

It would depend on the situation the person was in...IE their iminant danger/trauma/disadvantage. I'm going abroad next year so I don't know how Americans are viewed...but I always get dry heaves when I hear "if you come to America, you have to speak ENGLISH!". What most people don't remember is that it wasn't too many generations ago that our grandfathers and grandmothers came here and couldn't speak a damn word of English and were ripped off, swindled, and mistreated because of it.

I debated it-I was a legal resident, and had a green card, but was ineligible to work in the country. I was still in high school and was in the top 2% of my graduating class, but couldn't receive any scholarships to go to college. I didn't know what to do, so I did think about marrying my boyfriend (we'd been together 2 years at the time, now 5). It was a tough situation, and I know several people who have married their significant others of several years so that they could live together in the same country.

As it turned out, I became a citizen, thanks to the Child Adjustment Act of 1997, 2 weeks before my 18th birthday...although it still took another 2 years to get my certificate of citizenship.

i've gotta go with the 'love' part of marriage - especially since i'm already married :D

if things were different - well, i guess it would depend on how well i knew the person and what was to be involved on my end...


-marissa

I think you can get scholarships as a legal resident.. I received a few (I'm a legal "alien"). But legal residents miss out on many opportunities, like interning for any government agencies(which I really wanted to do).

I know I couldn't find any at the time that I was looking, plus what I was aiming for was Florida Bright Future's (full ride to a state school in Florida with a high enough GPA, SAT scores or an IB diploma), for which I needed the citizenship...everywhere else I looked I couldn't find anything that would help...I remember trying to do searches online and the best match I could find was a scholarship for Russian boy scouts...

Some good friends of mine had dated when he was in the marines. Her dad worked for an embassy. It was years before I met them so I don't remember where. They kept in touch for 8 years but dated other people, (I always thought he was afraid of commitment). Then she comes in from Canada and stays with him for a while. They got married so she did not have to go back. It was a bit of a quick adjustment and it was rough at first.

They are very much in love. She just had a baby yesterday. He has been in Iraq with my husband and made it home the evening she had the little boy. She has developed an entirely new social network because he is really all she had here. She lived with his mother for a while but she died in August. She has dual citizenship.

I guess that was a hijack--sorry. I do think it is okay to marry when it is a situation like this. This couple had to go through so much to "prove" it is a legitimate marriage. It is sad that people abuse this law that is meant to allow people who love each other to be together.