Love, Marriage, and Green Cards

For most of human history, love and marriage had positively nothing to do with each other. Marriages were arranged in order to strengthen alliances, end family feuds, and secure political power. You were lucky if you liked your spouse, let alone loved them!

In the United States today, we don’t see marriages for political power (though it’s an interesting thought experiment to think about what would happen if one of President Obama’s daughters married one of Mitt Romney’s sons). But we do see marriages that, more than likely, aren’t for love. The late Anna Nicole Smith, for example, made headlines when she married the 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. She was 26 at the time. Needless to say, the union of a former Playboy model to a man 63 years her senior raised some questions—until people found out Marshall’s net worth was a cool $1.6 billion.

According to the CDC, approximately 2.1 million marriages occurred in the United States in 2011. My guess is that some of these did not happen for love.

One interesting instance of such a transaction involves a special type of immigration visa—and highlights how government policy induces people to take desperate measures to improve their lives.

A K-1 visa is issued to individuals living outside the United States and allows him or her to immigrate in order to marry a U.S. citizen. I’ve written elsewhere about the complexities of the immigration process and how for many people in developing countries, their chances to obtaining entry for work or asylum are slim to none. Even those who can obtain work visas may spend years waiting in line. This has led people to undertake dangerous journeys and send even their children thousands of miles away alone–all in hopes of a better life.

As such, it should come as no surprise that more than one person has figured out they can get to the States by marrying a U.S. citizen. This issue received some attention recently with the release of the second season of the TLC reality show, “90 Day Fiance.” As the title of the show implies, the K-1 visa allows for a foreign fiancé to enter the country, but requires he or she to marry their betrothed within three months. In nearly every case, the family members of the American were skeptical, some asking point blank if their fiancé was “just in it for the green card.”

This is not to say that everyone who is issued a K-1 visa is solely seeking citizenship, but without a doubt, some people who enter the U.S. on K-1 visas are just in it for the green card. Understandably, there isn’t data on how many marriages take place every year just so a foreigner can obtain citizenship.

This got me thinking, why would someone marry a U.S. citizen if they were just looking to enter the U.S.? Is it easier than the alternatives?

Let’s look at the process for a K-1 visa. Assume the foreign partner is just trying to get a green card.

Add to this process the following. If you are just in it for the green card, you need to find someone to marry you. You can A.) manipulate another person and trick him or her into marrying you. This takes time, effort, and spending copious amounts of time without someone for whom you have no feelings. B.) You can find someone who will agree to marry you if you pay him (The amount of money this takes varies. I’ve seen estimates from less than $10,000 to $25,000+). This requires additional time and effort, though perhaps less time on the back end with someone you don’t really care about (though you have to fake it well enough to fool immigration). C.) You can find someone who is particularly sympathetic to your plight and get him to agree to marry you. You forgo paying them, perhaps, but still incur the costs noted above.

This process should seem insane–because it is! It requires time, money, and fraud. Yet, as economics tells us, individuals would not undertake these transactions if the benefits were not greater than the cost.

This means that the above process, all of it, is more appealing than going through the other U.S. immigration processes. If that doesn’t indicate a need to reform the current immigration system, I don’t know what does!