The Ups and Downs of Obtaining a Green Card
Anonymous, Undergraduate Student (UM-Dearborn) Is it worth it to do anything for a green card? I was once offered $20,000 in exchange for marrying someone and helping them obtain a “green card.” I believe it is a crime, but that makes me realize how difficult the immigration process is in the United States. As an immigrant, myself, I have experienced many different situations such as the process of receiving a green card, which is sensitive depending on the situation. I know of men and women from Mexico who will ask American citizens to marry them for the chance to reside in the United States. Marriage for legal citizenship is a problem. Obtaining a green card should not be so difficult to the point that people are willing to pay a large amount of money to illegally get one. A green card gives its holder the legal right to live and work in the U.S. permanently. Every year, the United States government grants green cards to thousands of immigrants that meet strict rules and characteristics. Based on the situation, many people who have family in the U.S., such as children who are citizens, obtain a green card to be with them. Employers also sponsor green cards. Still, many immigrants simply do not qualify for a green card. Let’s look at the case of Mexican immigration, for example. There is a long history of labor migration between the United States and Mexico as wages in Mexico tend to be much lower than in the United States. According to Labor Economics, “estimates indicate that intermarried Mexicans earn a 40 percent wage premium.” There is a significant opportunity to make more money working in the United States than in Mexico--especially with work authorization. People have a need or want to come to the U.S. and earn a living. Earning money with less fear of deportation highly suggests people to have the right documentation. U.S. officials argue that 30% of marriages between aliens and U.S. citizens are suspect. To detect frauds, U.S. immigration authorities require a lot of proof that a marriage is real, including demanding more documentation than they do from other family-based immigrant visa applicants. Applicants must prove that they share their lives by providing copies of such documents as rental agreements, bank account statements, and children’s birth certificates. A green card can always be lost if a person commits a crime or violates a law. Section 237 of the Immigration and Nationality Act states what makes a person deportable such as not reporting a change of address can get you in trouble. If a green card holder leaves the United States and tries to return, the person can become subject to the even broader grounds of inadmissibility found in Section 212 of the I.N.A. This is especially a problem if one spends six months or more outside the U.S. or commits a crime while out. If an immigrant continues living and working in the U.S. without a you are to lose the green card we go into our class readings and learn that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, strengthened U.S. immigration laws, they may face additional penalties for undocumented immigrants who commit crimes while in the United States or who stay in the U.S. for statutorily defined periods of time. I believe that in order to prevent marriages just for the sake of a green card, we should have an immigration system that provides more legal opportunities for single individuals to study and work in the U.S. We are harsh on unmarried immigrants and our immigration system does not currently provide enough viable pathways for immigrants who want to study and work hard in the U.S. to come here legally. As such, our policies have the unintended consequences of creating conditions that facilitate and encourage people to engage in marriage fraud in order to come here. Background checks should be strict, but we should not be so strict on people who are not married. References: 1. Chi, Miao. 2014. “How Much Is a Green Card Worth? Evidence from Mexican Men Who Marry Women Born in the U.S." Labour Economics, 31. 2. Ilona Bray, J. D. 2019. “What Does a Green Card Get You?” Retrieved February 12, 2021 (https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/what-green-card-get-you.html).
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