Coming Soon: The First Case of Same-Sex Marriage-Related Immigration Fraud

By David North on May 12, 2014

We all have started hearing about same-sex divorces, so I suspect we will soon hear of a case of same-sex marriage/immigration fraud.

It will involve a citizen and an alien, married to each other in one of the states that currently permits it, followed by an effort to secure a conditional green card for the alien spouse, and then the discovery that the marriage was phony to begin with.

The headline writers will have a field day.

All this comes to mind because another immigration writer, Joe Whalen, an EB-5 consultant, sent me a link to news about another gender-related immigration matter.

It was a decision made in April 2013 by the USCIS in-house appeals organization, the Administrative Appeals Office (AAO). The person involved wanted to use a naturalization form routinely used for name changes (N-565) for a slightly different purpose. To quote from the decision:

At the time of her birth and naturalization, the applicant's gender was identified as male, but she subsequently changed her gender to female and changed her name. The applicant seeks a new certification ... reflecting her changed name and gender.

USCIS staff said no, and AAO has ordered them to do what the Filipina wants.

Now that we have a breakthrough in that specific field, it is time to think about the first case of same-sex marriage-related immigration fraud.

My sense is that it will come to light, as so many of these do in the two-sex world, when the couple disagrees vehemently enough with each other for one of them to do something rash, which will take the matter into the open. Let's hope it is not one of those cases in which immigration/marriage fraud is linked to murder, a combination we have written about all too often in the past.

There is, incidentally, one potential form of same-sex marriage fraud that, without the couple's disagreement, will be almost impossible for even the most persistent USCIS investigators to break.

Here's the scenario: two straight males are roommates; one a citizen and the other an illegal alien. The alien fears deportation so the two get married and apply for a conditional residence card for him. If a USCIS agent comes to their residence to check on the situation, the agent will find both members of the couple at home, apparently friendly with each other, and the investigation collapses even after a site visit. Such visits are often useful in two-sex marriage fraud cases because they often show that one person — not two people — lives at the residence that was given on the application form, and that either there are no clothes in the closet for the other person, or that there are other indices of single inhabitation. There will be no such evidence in this situation.

Fortunately, I suspect that the imaginary scenario outlined above is rare in real life.