Immigration policies are a highly controversial issue just now, but USA Today recently pointed out that none of the proposed solutions to illegal immigration addresses one of the most common ways illegals enter our country: through "green card" marriages.
According to the newspaper, The Department of Homeland Security says more foreigners gain U.S. residency through marriage than by any other method. In fact, marriage-based immigration accounted for 37 percent of all legal immigration in 2004.
But fraud is a huge problem with such immigration. For all the talk of fences and walls, guest worker programs, etc., no one is proposing doing more to discover immigration fraud through sham marriages. And this is quite worrisome, considering that terrorists are just as likely to use this method to enter our society as farm workers and construction crews.
The paper quotes research by the Center for Immigration Studies, which looked at 36 suspected terrorists who had obtained green cards. The center found that fully half had done so by marrying an American – and half of those had done so through a sham marriage.
I don't know of a single proposal being considered that would close this loophole, but perhaps some of our politicans should be considering it.
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