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March 15, 2002
The Fiancée Visa Racket
By
Joe Guzzardi
When “Abby” enrolled in my English as a second
language class, she had been in the U.S. for only a few
weeks.
Abby is different from most of my students. At
twenty, she is younger than the average student. And
Abby’s native country is Brazil. Most of my class is
either from
Mexico or
Pakistan.
Something else set Abby apart, too. As a brand new bride living out her dream of coming to America,
Abby was full of enthusiasm for learning English.
Abby said that she had met her husband while he was
working on a construction crew in Brazil. When they fell
in love, she got a fiancée visa, joined him in Lodi and
they married.
When I heard “fianceé visa,” I was immediately
skeptical. But the story sounded
plausible. Since Abby is a nice kid, I wanted to give
her the benefit of the doubt. But before long, my
suspicions were confirmed.
I overheard Abby tell classmates that her husband was
twice her age, didn’t want her to learn to drive and
worked as an auto mechanic.
And one day, when part of a classroom exercise was to
write sentences using either “must” or “might,” Abby
wrote: “Why must you drink so much?”
Then, three months after she arrived in the U.S., Abby
announced that her husband had thrown her out.
As it turned out, Mr. Wonderful is 58, nearly three
times Abby’s age. And Abby is the third woman he brought
to the U.S. on a fiancée visa. The other two were
Russian women, whom he cut loose before marrying them.
Abby doesn’t know what happened, but we can be 100% sure
they didn’t go back to Russia.
Here in a nutshell is Abby’s current situation: she
has no job, no skills, no money, no close friends, no
family and no home. She speaks limited English. If Abby
is lucky, she might land a
7-Eleven job.
Abby is living in the Women’s Center. She can stay
there for 60 days. In the meantime, she goes to Lodi
Community Center where she gets free bus tickets and two
free loaves of bread a week.
Mr. Wonderful has offered to buy Abby a return ticket
to Brazil. But she doesn’t want to go. “I’m already
here,” she declared.
While I feel badly for the young and naïve Abby,
anyone who puts herself up for sale on the Internet has
to take the consequences.
No matter what anyone may think about the merits or
flaws of our immigration system, few can argue that the
growth of international marriage agencies, aided and
abetted by the “fiancée visa” is—for all except the
shameless immigration lawyers and those who own the
agencies —a bad deal all around.
The K-1 or
fiancée visa makes it all happen. The visa, valid
for 90 days, is issued when an American male
petitions the INS for the woman to come to the U.S.
If no marriage occurs during that period, then legally
the woman must return. Of course, not many do.
Matchmaking companies drive the K-1 visa sham.
Marriage agencies are an unregulated,
multimillion-dollar industry. Organizations like the
Anastasia Company (www.russianbrides.com)
claim to do it all for the prospective groom.
So accommodating is the Anastasia Company that it
will even arrange for flowers, candy or teddy bears to
be delivered to over
180 Russian and Ukrainian cities. “Make your lady
feel special!” encourages Anastasia. Just imagine: your
bouquet in Moldova!
When it comes time for the visa nitty-gritty, the
Anastasia Company passes the ball to the K-1
specialists, Lawrence R. Holmes and Allan Scott Lolly (www.fianceevisas.com).
Conveniently, the two firms endorse each other on their
websites.
If you are perhaps intrigued by the prospect of a
Russian bride, may I sound a cautionary note? Holmes,
who devotes his entire practice to fiancée visas, has
this potentially exhausting advice for clients: “Stay in
Russia for as long as possible. Spend as much time with
as many women as possible. This increases your odds of
success.”
And Holmes is very proud of his success. His website
proudly states that Holmes has “a 100% success rate.”
All of this is tawdry stuff. Young women like Abby
who would probably have decent lives in their own
country come to America to be turned out and then left
to their own devices.
But sometimes the young “exotic” brides dump the
loser guys. Often the women know more about how things
work in the U.S. than they have let on.
Many husbands have complained that their sweet brides
had dramatic personality changes once they arrived on
American soil. And other men report that once married,
the new bride announces that her children—previously
unmentioned—will be joining them soon.
Said former Senior INS official
T. Alexander Aleinikoff in a critical
statement about the international
marriage business, “This is not to say that some (K-1
visa) marriages aren’t bona fide but given the chance
for abuse and exploitation, should we be handing out
visas that aren’t subject to quotas where the industry
is totally unregulated?”
The fiancée visa isn’t in our national interest. The
U.S. has no compelling need to issue a K-1 visa. Nor do
we need the new
K-3 visas that reduce the waiting time for those who
married overseas and wish to bring their spouses to the
U.S.
We need to slow down, not speed up, any and all
immigration processes.
Yet the number of K-1 visas issued annually has
increased steadily over the last five years, according
to the State Department.
Eliminating these visas would be an excellent way to
begin the
overdue cutback in legal levels of immigration.
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
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