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Comment by poisonarena | Hacker News Reader

You could also just pay someone WAYYYYY less than 100k to marry you for citizenship no?

I don't know why you're being downvoted since it is something that is done by some individuals.

Just marrying somebody is usually not sufficient though, and there are other requirements (put in place exactly to avoid this practice). For example you may be required to

* Being married for a number of years

* Residing with your spouse in the target country for number of years

After meeting all the requirements you need to request the citizenship to the relevant authority, and the whole process may take quite some time.

An example: if you marry an Italian citizen you may request citizenship after 2 years of marriage (3 if you're not living in Italy), but then it will take usually 3 more years for your request to be processed.

Also keep in mind that some nations don't allow double citizenship, or require special circumstances (I think to remember it is the case for Germany and Holland) so you may have to choose between the two.

I've seen people go through this process (without money involved, to be clear, they were genuinely trying to live together) in both Canada and the US and it's nowhere near as simple or guaranteed as people think. Maybe it is in some countries, but I'd expect many 'desirable' countries are actively trying to filter out people who marry specifically for citizenship.

Having gone through this process in the US myself, I won't dispute the "not simple" part, but how is it not guaranteed? As long as the marriage is done in good faith why would the permanent residency - and then citizenship - be denied?

There is no CAP for "green cards through marriage" so no waiting list, and the residency period to transition to citizenship is shorter (3 years) than the standard (5 years I believe).

Your question has the answer in it: because it can be denied on grounds of not being in good faith. GP post was talking about literally paying someone for marriage to obtain citizenship, literally the opposite of a good faith marriage in terms of this process.

People think it's a rubber stamp, but from what I've seen it's an invasive process where they poke around all sorts of aspects of your personal life to ascertain how 'good faith' your marriage is.

Sure, the GP was talking about marriage fraud, but I was under the impression that the post I was replying too was making a general statement that GC through marriage in general was not guaranteed. My bad for misunderstanding.

My XP is only one data point of course, but the process was not invasive at all. We had to provide some documentation (e.g. statements of shared bank account, utility bills with our names), go through a 30-ish minute interview where we had to explain how we met, how we got engage, etc and that was it. Now, maybe when the USCIS suspects fraud they start digging a little more and it gets painful.

The people I know had friends interviewed and it took quite a long time (a couple years at least) of that sort of thing for whatever reason. It still took quite a few years for even permanent residence, afaik citizenship was never even obtained.

I don't doubt that the experiences vary. But the entire point of my reply was that you can't just buy into citizenship with marriage because they will deny you if they find out you did that, ergo it is not guaranteed.

In my country, the person wanting the citizenship has to live in the country for three years (married) before they can apply for naturalisation. Of course, they already get a lot of rights (and pay taxes) if they live here.

it is illegal. saving a mil is not worth the risk to someone who has 500 of them

Seems risky for wealthy people. I can't imagine they would want to marry someone they don't trust. Imagine the divorce settlement and the potential for blackmail. Yikes

Not so easy. As a new spouse living in my wife's country, getting citizenship – or even a permanent spouse visa – is a long, tedious, and relatively stressful process.

But that's illegal, risky and hard.

and probably go to jail for fraud.

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