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30 k$ seems pretty low for a crime whose default punishment (for the citizen, not for the alien) under the US Sentencing Guidelines is a prison sentence of 8–14 months plus a fine of 4–40 k$. I have a hard time believing that enforcement is so lax that people will commit such an easily-trackable felony for so little.
you think people are not so desperate they wouldn't take $30k to commit a crime that simply involves lying to the government about the contents of their heart?
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It seems very hard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Just don't write anything down.
"Oh it was love at first sight, so we married shortly after meeting."
"Our marriage wasn't very close, but things don't always match your expectations."
"Yes, I did end up 20-30k richer than you might expect after the divorce, but that's well within the normal variance."
It would be a lot easier to prove that someone had a sham Sacrament of Holy Matrimony than a sham legal marriage because civil standards are incredibly lax.
It isn't that simple. Court opinions on this topic show that the immigration authorities conduct intrusive interviews and investigations to check whether the marriage appears genuine. How did you meet? How did you propose? Where was the honeymoon? What is your spouse's birthday? Do you live with your spouse? Do you share a bank account? Et cetera.
@dr_analog @hydroacetylene
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No, ergvw34 is right- if you’re of the right ethnicity(IIRC he’s Hispanic, which would have a much lower going rate than Africans would have to pony up), the cost of a green card marriage is extremely low, and if you’re willing to live together for the whole five-ish years that’s all the proof immigration needs.
You don’t even need to live together. Just have all your mail delivered to the fake spouse address, and pick it up once in a while. If you have relatives you can live with them and pay them in cash for living expenses. Easy peasy
The federal investigators will check whether you are living together.
None of the people I know who got their green cards this way actually moved in together, except the one marriage that was real. They all just pretended to.
I once heard the process summed up as "find a gringo who is willing to participate, take a dozen photographs together, and practice the right answers for the interview". It's a little more complicated than that (e.g. the woman is expected to change her last name), but not much. That's why you pay an immigration lawyer; he knows what the immigration officials want to see and will teach you how to fake it. Honeymoon photos can be as simple as taking a trip to Disneyland together for one weekend.
I really think you are forming an inaccurate picture of how thoroughly the government investigates these marriages based on the documents you are reading online. Having seen the process with my own eyes, I can tell you it's not like that.
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