Immigration lawyers are warning that federal agencies are increasingly skeptical when migrants claim to have legitimate marriages with Americans.
The policy shift comes after President Donald Trump’s deputies began cracking down on rising rates of marriage-related visa fraud by migrants who pay Americans for temporary marriages.
While marrying a U.S. citizen has never been a locked-in guarantee that a migrant would be issued a green card, marriages have previously offered a huge boost to a migrant’s request for legal status. But that may be changing as immigration attorneys are finding that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) are giving such marriages much closer scrutiny than ever before.
Immigration attorney Brad Bernstein of Spar & Bernstein is warning his clients that marrying a U.S. citizen is no longer the near-guarantee of legal residence for foreign nationals, NDTV reported.
One new wrinkle in requests for marriage-related green cards is residency. The Trump administration is prioritizing a shared domicile for the migrant and the U.S. citizen, a requirement that was not prioritized in the past. Bernstein says.