What It's Like to Marry Someone Just to be Able to Stay in America

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/immigration/what-its-marry-someone-just-be-able-stay-america

Every so often, Boi na Brasa, an otherwise low-key sports bar in Newark, N.J., hosts a sweaty, techno-fueled dance party thronged with young Brazilians.

On the way to one of these parties, Priscilla,* stuffed into the front seat of a pickup truck with three other 20-somethings, received her first marriage proposal. She’d met the man—her would-be betrothed—not five minutes earlier, when her ride opened the truck’s passenger door to reveal the red-faced stranger. But Priscilla, a 24-year-old American born to Brazilian parents, had been expecting the question.

As the truck barreled towards the party, the couple talked specifics. How much money was he offering? (between $10,000 and $15,000). Where would they live? (In Priscilla’s apartment, most likely). When would they meet each other’s families? (at Christmas). Priscilla, whose parents immigrated from Brazil to the U.S. before she was born, switched fluidly between the languages of the two countries. Her counterpart, nervous, spoke only Portuguese. An hour later, Priscilla would tell a friend that she didn’t think the man was good fit for marriage, even if it was temporary. It’s a felony to “marry for papers,” of course, but that wasn’t her concern. No amount of money, Priscilla said, could make a union to a man that ugly believable.

Like many people raised in immigrant communities, Priscilla’s social circle is viciously divided into haves and have-nots; those born in the U.S. to immigrant parents (citizens) vs. those brought here at a young age and still undocumented (“illegals”). Had Priscilla agreed to marry the stranger, she would have joined a storied, unspoken tradition that’s been captivating headlines in recent months. In October, Gabriela Rosa, the first Dominican-born woman to serve in the New York Assembly, was sentenced to a year in prison after it was revealed she paid a U.S. citizen $8,000 to marry her in 1996. A few days later, Cylvia Hayes, the fiancee of Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, admitted that she married an undocumented Ethiopian man in 1997 for $5,000. She has yet to face criminal charges.

[merrily]

1. I don't think this is anything new, or confined to any one immigrant community.