Green card marriage

A green card marriage is a marriage of convenience between a legal resident of the United States of America and a person who would be ineligible for residency but for being married to the resident. The term derives from the availability of permanent resident documents ("Green cards") for spouses of legal residents in the United States, where marriage is one of the fastest and surest ways to obtain 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.

This type of marriage is only a subset of all marriages between residents and non-residents; most marriages are not undertaken to exploit immigration law.

Most marriages between residents and non-residents are undertaken properly, for reasons other than or in addition to residency status. That being said, the practice of obtaining residency through marriage 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 yet 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.

The film Green Card is a romantic comedy that portrays a green card marriage. The films The Proposal and The Wedding Banquet portray a similar marriages of convenience designed to allow the main female character to stay in the United States.

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