One Way Love: Looking For Romance Or Looking For Visas?
Project Summary

Problem Statement
It is what romance novels are made of: being whisked away by an exotic stranger from another country, keeping you safe and secure. The love of your life intrigues all of your senses, being enchanted in a mystifying land. Yet, not many people are seeking love but are seeking more tangible gains: money, financial security, and visas. It is harsh, but it is reality. Foreigners stalk and prey social networks, chat rooms, and romance sites for their loves, hoping it would lead them to money and permanent resident status in a more prosperous country.

Methods and Analysis
From September to November, I will collect articles and other various research materials and use the knowledge gained from these articles to interview persons and organizations in connection to scam marriages and visa-marriage arrangements.

Intellectual Merit
Through the in-depth study of different stories of scam marriages, we will interview persons of interests as well as review articles. The research takes an integrative approach to anthropological research.

Research Questions & Objectives
1) to document the incidence of multiple multicultural marriages for residency purposes among research participants. This involves collecting life histories that focus on the ethnic background of informants and their experience with
2) collecting data on characteristics of the communities, forums, and social networks of participants.
3) to determine behaviors of individuals seeking love versus individuals seeking visas

Literature Review
This is a topic that has been a debated topic in recent years. I used and articles for my information.

In How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Stella flies to Jamaica to get away from a stressful life, only to fall in love with a young local. Coming from different age brackets, cultural distinctions, and socio-economic backgrounds, they work through their differences and make it work. In reality, many men and women are falling victim to foreign romeos’, juliets’, and casanovas’. Particularly Americans and United Kingdom residents travel abroad, only to be wooed by foreigner lovers. Claiming they are in love with their traveling victims, they woo their way into their hearts and their new found permanent status into their new adopted country.

Here are some key points to consider:

Key Points
Marriage to an American citizen remains the most common path to U.S. residency and/or citizenship for foreign nationals, with more than 2.3 million foreign nationals gaining lawful permanent resident (LPR) status in this manner between 1998 and 2007.

More than 25 percent of all green cards issued in 2007 were to the spouses of American citizens. In 2006 and 2007 there were nearly twice as many green cards issued to the spouses of American citizens than were issued for all employment-based immigration categories combined. The number of foreign nationals obtaining green cards based on marriage to an American has more than doubled since 1985, and has quintupled since 1970.

Despite these statistics, marriage fraud for the purpose of immigration gets very little notice or debate in the public arena and the State Department and Department of Homeland Security have nowhere near the resources needed to combat the problem. Attention to fraud is not just for the integrity of the legal immigration system, but also for security reasons. If small-time con artists and Third-World gold-diggers can obtain green cards with so little resistance, then surely terrorists can do (and have done) the same.

An overwhelming percentage of all petitions to bring foreign spouses or fiancés to the United States illegally (or to help them adjust visa status if they are already in the United States on non-immigrant visas) are approved — even in cases where the couple may only have met over the Internet, and may not even share a common language.

Marriage to an American is the clearest pathway to citizenship for an illegal alien. A substantial number of illegal aliens ordered removed (many of whom have criminal records) later resurface as marriage-based green card applicants. Waivers granted to those marrying U.S. citizens can eliminate ineligibilities for green cards, including the 3/10-year bar on entry for those with long periods of illegal presence.

Are Americans the most beautiful, charming, and seductive people on the planet or are we in demand as marriage partners by those in the developing world in part because marrying a U.S. citizen is the quickest and easiest path toward becoming an American lawful permanent resident (LPR, also called having a “green card”)? Over the last decade, marriage to American citizens, which entitles foreign spouses to “immediate” preference status for an immigrant visa, has been by far the most common path to American residency. Since 1998, more than 2.3 million foreign nationals have obtained green cards through marriage to American citizens. (See Tables 1 and 2.) Nearly a million more have obtained green cards through marriage to LPRs. The foreign spouse of a green card holder is subject to a wait of at least three years, however, making American citizens much more attractive targets.1 Just over a quarter of all green cards issued in 2007 were to spouses of American citizens. In 2006 and 2007 nearly twice as many green cards were issued to spouses of American citizens than for all employment-based immigration categories combined.2 (See Figure 1.)

Yet while there is endless debate about the quantity and type of workers we import, there is very little focus or discussion on the foreign spouses Americans bring to the country — either through genuine relationships or fraudulent ones. Any serious examination of legal immigration to the United States must include a close look at the most common path to American citizenship: marriage to an American citizen or LPR.

Marriage fraud for the purpose of immigration is not a new idea. More than 20 years ago the United States Senate held hearings on the topic and concluded that it was a significant and growing problem, but only a few of the recommendations proposed ever went anywhere. Meanwhile, the number of foreign nationals obtaining green cards through marriage to Americans has more than doubled since 1985 and has quintupled since 1970.3 Yet there have been few truly in-depth examinations of this topic, partly because the issue is difficult to discuss without offending legitimate international spouses.

Most relationships between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate, but because of the prevalence of sham marriages, legitimate international couples can face longer wait times due to the huge number of bogus marriage petitions that bog down an already slow and cumbersome visa bureaucracy. Scam marriages also can cast a shadow of illegitimacy over real marriages, and many legitimate couples may be forced to endure invasive and sometimes harsh interviews with United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) and State Department personnel who are trying in good faith to screen out fake couples.

I have several American friends, and family members, who have married foreign nationals, so I know first-hand that not all foreigners who marry Americans are simply seeking a one-way ticket to the United States.

Although the idea of importing foreign “catalog” spouses dates back to the 18th century, the concept of “mail-order brides” didn’t really take off until after the end of the Cold War and then exploded in popularity after the advent of the Internet, which has done more to facilitate cross-cultural relationships than any other event in human history. Cherry Blossoms (http://www.blossoms.com/), an international “picture personals business” whose home page features a photo of a dour, middle-aged Caucasian man in an outdated tuxedo embracing a cute, young Southeast Asian woman in a wedding dress, claims to be the first catalog bride operation and takes credit for more than 100,000 married or engaged couples since 1974. The site features a “testimonials” page featuring smiling, mostly older men either thanking Cherry Blossoms or offering their desire to meet “sincere, attractive” women. Cherry Blossoms also offers, for $600, visa support and help with a new spouse’s adjustment of status if she is already in the United States, making it not only a matchmaking service, but also an immigration business.

Today, there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of international matchmaking businesses operating around the world — most for the express purpose of matching lonely men from the United States and other wealthy countries with women from developing countries who want to live in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe. The words “mail-order bride” generate more than two million hits in a Google search, with scores of companies offering brides from Russia, Poland, Thailand, the Philippines, China, and a host of other developing countries.

Perhaps the most easily detectable type of marriage fraud is when a fee — typically between $5,000 and $10,000 — is paid to the American to marry a foreign national who wishes to live in the United States or already does, but needs to regulate his or her legal status. An officer with experience in an Andean country in South America told me that the going rate for a bogus marriage there is $5,000, while officers with experience in the Pacific Rim report that many intending immigrants will pay up to $20,000 to marry an American. There are undoubtedly some “fixers” able to find plausible American spouses for foreigners willing to pay cash, but it often is difficult for the fixers to make believable matches between foreigners willing to pay and Americans desperate enough for cash that they’ll sell their hand in marriage.

The main reasons for this are language and culture. Most Americans — particularly those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum — only speak English and most determined immigrants do not. In Latin America, the language issue is less of a problem because there are millions of Spanish speakers in the United States to choose from, but in other parts of the world the language issue is a major obstacle for would-be sham marriage couples. Most overseas consular officers are immediately suspicious of married couples who cannot communicate with each other — even though there is no legal requirement for couples to share any common language — and many consular officers, especially in the busiest posts, will approve marriage petitions for couples that share no common language. For petitions filed in the United States, American petitioners can claim to speak their spouses’ language and at the world’s busiest posts in Mexico, China, and elsewhere, officers do not have time to track down petitioners to verify the claims.

The other primary obstacle is that most Americans desperate enough to engage in this illegal behavior have no significant overseas travel history or knowledge of other cultures. In Budapest, for example, I once interviewed a 36-year-old Nigerian woman who was the beneficiary of a fiancé petition filed for her by a 22-year-old American who worked in a bakery in the Bronx. Since the petition was filed in the United States (as is required for fiancé cases), the American wasn’t present and all I had to go by was his fiancé along with the petition, which contained photocopies of the American’s plane tickets and hotel reservations, along with a few clearly staged photos of the couple together in Budapest.

Classic marriage fraud cases involve two people conspiring to bring an immigrant to the United States based on a phony marriage, but for every case where there are two conspirators there is at least one where the American believes the marriage is based on mutual affection and love while the foreigner only wants to obtain a green card. Consular officers, particularly in developing countries where residents are desperate to “get out of Dodge,” frequently interview cross-cultural couples who appear to be grossly mismatched, but cannot deny the petitions of Americans who do not know that they are being used for a visa, which makes this type of one-sided marriage fraud nearly impossible to stop.

Middle-aged American men are the most common victims, though younger people and women fall victim as well. One American woman who fell victim to a sham marriage — Elena Maria Lopez — founded the website http://www.immigrationfraud.com/ in order to help other Americans in the same situation and many other American victims have webpages and blogs warning Americans about marriage fraud.9

The clichéd case involves Americans who for whatever reason —recently divorced, mid-life crisis, etc. — move to or travel to a developing country and soon find that they are able to date members of the opposite sex who wouldn’t give them the time of day in the United States. Americans with no previous travel experience who are sent overseas as contractors, soldiers, and laborers are particularly susceptible to being duped into marriage. When Americans overseas feel desirable, perhaps for the first time in their entire lives, many fail to see that poverty and desperation is what makes them popular.

Sometimes immigration officers interview wide-eyed, love-stricken Americans who have no idea that the person they have just married or are about to marry has a track record of visa denials, fraud, or immigration violations and consular officers often have to decide how much information to divulge to the American about their spouses’ immigration track records.

Every year, thousands of foreign nationals wishing to move to the United States or gain permanent resident status do so by marrying American citizens. In some cases, the Americans are willing participants in the fraud, in others they are victims. There is no way of knowing what percentage of the 300,000-plus spouses who gain green cards each year through marriage to American citizens or LPRs do so based on a fraudulent relationship, but consular officers interviewed for this Backgrounder offered estimates ranging from 5 to 30 percent. Whatever the actual percentage, tens of thousands of people get married each year solely for the purpose of immigration to the United States.