By George H. Tsai
A lucrative trade among new immigrants is fake marriage, which is when illegal aliens marry U.S. citizens, paying them $60,000 to $80,000 to help change their status or enter this country.
To the average household in Queens, that is a lot of dough. Few blue-collar workers make that kind of money in a year. In some cases, the immigrants make cash payments for the deal, while others do it through installments. No wonder the scam is thriving.
It is an open secret, though. Immigration authorities are aware of this situation and have stepped up their crackdown on such scams, which are rampant among all ethnic groups.
Such dealings occur everywhere, but particularly in Queens, where new immigrants account for a large — and rising — percentage of the borough’s population. Queens is perhaps the capital of new immigrants on the East Coast, and Flushing has a lion’s share of the county’s new arrivals.
The marriage dealers can beat the snakeheads, or immigrant smugglers, in profits, yet at a lower risk. Readers may recall that a city woman was arrested a few months ago on charges that she had married a dozen illegal aliens in exchange for her help in obtaining the coveted green cards. Over the years, the phony marriages had made her a wealthy woman. Of course, there are many others like her.
Since her arrest, there has been little news about her. If convicted, she could face a long prison sentence, which could possibly deter others from following suit.
The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in New York has taken note of these marriage scams and boosted the number of interview officers. The agency weeded out 9,500 fake married couples in 2003, or 53 percent of the applications. The rejections represented a 23 percent increase compared with that of the previous year, reports showed.
The phony marriage trade still enjoys a booming market in Queens, nevertheless. It was reported that before interviews, some applicants would turn to so-called immigration lawyers for tips. These “experts” would coach them in how to answer tough questions.
Marriage certificates and wedding pictures can hardly convince the interviewers that the interviewees are true mates.
Regrettably, fake marriages have affected a good number of bona-fide couples seeking to change their spouses’ status. Data show, however, that a small number of phony marriages have developed into real ones.
If their presentation sails through the tedious interview process, the spouses could get a temporary stamp of approval on their passports, allowing them to stay in this country or travel overseas. After that, it will probably take the spouses a year or two to get green cards and an additional three years to become U.S. citizens. Regular green-card holders have to wait five years before they can apply for citizenship.
With that preliminary approval, the spouses could apply to bring their immediate relatives to this country.
Marriage is the shortest bridge leading to status change, and it is why the civil court on Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens is always jam-packed with lovers waiting to say “I do” in a one-minute ceremony presided over by a person acting as a sort of a minister.
As I understand, an overwhelming majority of the applicants are real couples; they can survive any suspicion and eventually get what they deserve. But some are using the system’s loopholes for financial gains.
To get a marriage certificate is easy, but to get a green card is not.
It is more difficult to get a permanent residency card these days. Obviously efforts to ward off the infiltration of terrorists have something to do with that. So some of those phony couples have broken up because either the immigration authorities have tightened the screws or the marriage-seekers just did not have the patience to wait.
Behind the marriage scandal, some illegals complained about abuses by their greedy marriage dealers.
In one instance, an attractive Shanghai woman in her late 20s wanted to come to the United States through a fake marriage. She found a local man who was 20 years her senior and she came to this country. But the man shunned the monetary compensation and kept the woman against her will for two years before letting her go.
Like snakeheads, numerous bloodsuckers in search of prospective spouses have expanded their offers overseas because of greater profits.
