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Comment by craigbellot | Hacker News Reader

The only thing worse than a company that knows you have no leverage is a wife that knows you have no leverage.

There's this thing called love, you might have heard of it.

And it can't be summoned forth at will for the purpose of solving immigration issues.

It is pretty easy to meet US citizens in the US, however. If you're looking for a girlfriend / wife anyway, then the odds are high that she will be a citizen. Two birds with one stone.

If you're looking for a girlfriend / wife anyway, then the odds are high that she will be a citizen.

Not necessarily true. If he comes from a country with a significantly different culture (i.e., somewhere other than Europe), he would probably be more comfortable marrying someone of his own nationality who is also a recent immigrant, and thus is more likely to also be a non-citizen.

Huh? I think you and the upmodders do not realize that once the spouse gets the marriage-based green card, it doesn't get revoked in a divorce. AFAIK and IANAL.

Unless there is some other point to this comment that is going WAY above my head.

But the first marriage based green card is temporary; it expires in 3 years. That doesn't mean that even if you get a divorce you'll get thrown out, but it certainly increases the risk.

Background: I'm a citizen, and my wife when through the process when we got married six years ago. She became a citizen a couple of years ago.

Well, your knowledge is surely lacking. To prevent immigration fraud, the rule is that when you marry a citizen, you get a temporary green card which is valid for 2 years. You must go back to USCIS after 2 years to get a permanent green card. Also, it's quite possible that USCIS will ask for proof that your marriage was legit (wedding pictures/honeymoon pictures/joint bank accounts). If you get divorced before 2 years, it becomes kind of tricky to get permanent green card. [Read http://www.shusterman.com/greencardsthroughmarriage.html, scroll to 'REMOVING CONDITIONAL RESIDENCE' section]

Also, if you get divorce after getting green card and if USCIS finds out that you married citizen only to get green card, they can revoke it.

Yes, I knew about the "probationary period" etc.

But the unqualified "no leverage" of the OP seemed to imply at least to me that they thought that the green card would be taken away in a divorce irrespective of number of years of marriage (it doesn't after two years unless you got into a fraudulent marriage).

And I do not think the GP suggested getting a sham marriage. Yes, if you really enter into a sham marriage then the "wife" will have lots of leverage over you.

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