"The fact is, the government does tend to view certain types of unions as more “legitimate” and certain types of spouses more worthy of citizenship. “Expectations of sexual intimacy are implicit in all of the laws around family reunification for [mixed-status] couples, and I think some couples try to make it explicit in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of their relationship,” said Jane Lilly López, a sociologist at Brigham Young University and the author of Unauthorized Love: Mixed-Citizenship Couples Negotiating Intimacy, Immigration, and the State.
Is it any wonder that couples misread the subtext and send in NSFW stuff?"
It's not an opinion that many motivations for marriage are treated as illegitimate in circumstances like this, and it's not an opinion that marriage is expected to almost always involve sex.
That USCIS requires people to submit evidence that their marriage is "genuine", and can reject an application based on such evidence being insufficient, is a fact:
"The burden is on the applicant to establish that he or she is in a valid marriage with his or her U.S. citizen spouse for the required period of time. A spouse of a U.S. citizen must submit with the naturalization application an official civil record to establish that the marriage is legal and valid. If an official civil record cannot be produced, secondary evidence may be accepted on a case-by-case basis. An officer has the right to request an original record if there is doubt as to the authenticity of the record."
USCIS instructs you to provide proof that you're in a 'real' relationship, and half the people in the world are below-average at exercising good judgement... Or at parsing weird written and unwritten bureaucratic rules.
Letters, proof of cohabitation (bills, rent payments), use of joint financial accounts, photographs, chat logs, wills, written testimonies from friends/in-laws, a child or three, a five-hundred word life-story essay.
Not everyone has all of these things as evidence to a sufficient extent, but most people will be able to provide enough of them to convince immigration. If they can't, if they are lucky, they may get a request for more evidence, instead of an outright rejection.
I had a family member go through this. Proof of travel, photos of trips, phone bills, so many phone bills, etc.
But I can easily see how it'd go wrong. If you spend your visits impersonating rabbits, what proof do you have? If you spend more time on snapchat than the phone, what proof do you have?
There's an old trope of "yes, I do have a girlfriend. you wouldn't know her, she's from another school." She lives in another city, she's from Canada, etc. How do you expect your friend to prove their claim? Now replace the playground with INS/USCIS.
It ends up being a very vague question because there's no set limit of what level of evidence you need to reach, you just need to "satisfy" whoever opens that file.
The first time I went through this, in the end it's possible that the only thing that mattered was my partner being several months pregnant at the time of her interview.
The second time, I wrote a photo-story instead of just packing in a pile of 4x6 prints. "Here's us dating, here's us married, we took this trip here, this other trip there, here's my partner and her child with my parents and one of my siblings, here's me meeting her parents, here's our wedding, here's me and the kid, here's all of us at various events, here's us celebrating an anniversary," etc.
At least few co mingled things, at the minimum mail to same address, joint tax returns, maybe some shared utilities bills, each person using their cards alternatively randomly while being together, some travel (local in city or far), some birthday anniversary stuff photos, few gifts like cards, flowers stuff, time & photos with each other's family, a detailed 4-10 pages of statement about relationship, how they met, when serious, who proposed, when wedding, who in wedding, wedding expenses bills, after wedding, stuff. Proof of communication , social media posts, chat screenshots. Not everything is required. Anything available should be submitted. I didn't had any joint bank statements, or utilities. I had 100s of photos.
You cannot do joint tax return when not recognized legally as married in the US, it's one of the benefits.
And I'm not sure how marriage to a foreign national works in the US, but it might not grant this benefit.
Same address (and checked by immigration official) means you already have a temporary visa. (Same address in another country does not count, easy to fake.) So they already let you in...
Having paid some US bills would be a hardest one but it does not substantiate the marriage.
All the other stuff? Trivial to fake. These days, even a lewd sex picture can be done without the act.
The best one is pregnancy validated as one of the parents'. Kind of expensive.
See where this is going? If they don't want to let you stay forever, they will find an excuse.
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You cannot do joint tax return when not recognized legally as married in the US, it's one of the benefits. And I'm not sure how marriage to a foreign national works in the US, but it might not grant this benefit.
An American can get married to a foreign national, and the marriage will be recognized for tax purposes.
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Yes, you've listed all the various ways that a vindictive USCIS can screw someone applying for a spousal Visa. That's very clever and all, but is irrelevant for the vast majority of applicants.
And the ones for whom it is relevant are going to benefit more from speaking to an immigration lawyer, than running over what-if-wargames in their head.
Any marriage, when its legal in that place/country it happened, is considered legal in US (assuming its not like under-age or bigamy or illegal stuff). When a US resident marries (& even if foreign spouse has never set a foot on US soil), IRS does allow only Married filing together or married filing separately, in both cases if no social of spouse available, you write NSA (No Social Account Number) in tax return.
People adjust (or gain) status all the time while they are here already in US on some other visa. Having a temporary visa is has no good or bad effect on getting green card. Its similar (easy or difficult) in other countries as it is in US, its not "easy" in other country(ies) to fake address if it is not easy in USA.
Pregnancy (removed from all facts, sole pregnancy) is never on its own a proof of bonafide relationship. Who is the bio father? The whole collection of proofs when seen as collective, tells the picture & intent.
USCIS & agencies has to follow a manual & policies & procedure (much of it is published on USCIS's website), & 99% of the time the officer can not intentionally bring a personal bias (exceptions apply). There are millions of cases getting passed, & a single USCIS employee does not decide a single case. Like any other big organisation, everybody is doing apart of process. & they have managers, & managers above them. Even USCIS itself is not above law, people routinely sue USCIS in federal courts to challenge their decisions (or lack of decisions).
> No shit, what are these people thinking? after all of the years of hardwork to get the citizenship, they would just send it for what? for fun??
The article dances around the subject a bit, but I think that the answer to your question is still clear:
They do it because, in their minds (and let's face it, they're not wrong) it will undercut questions about whether they are serious about their claims to be in a consummated marriage, which is the legal requirement.
And, as the article points out, this tactic does sometimes work (which is also not a surprise).
I don't understand criticizing the people submitting what is common-sense evidence of what the system requires. If you want the "porn" to stop, then change the system.
A bit? The article is absolutely atrocious. It's one of those mind-numbing creative-writing pieces that make you want to scream "get to the #!$%ing point!" at your computer. But then you just calm down and reach for the back button.
It's the kind of writing that gets people to cheer for ChatGPT and Co. in the hope that soon all these writers will be looking for a different job.
Have you ever tried to navigate the immigration process? I have, twice now. It's a Kafka-esque nightmare of Orwellian bureaucracy, and I wish I could think of a third famous writer to reference to finish this sentence.
The first time, years ago, they "lost" a packet of information we had to reconstruct at great pains, and then had to get a second physical because they lost the report from the first one. We only found that out after getting our state's federal senator's office involved.
The second time, we ran into both rapidly-changing immigration requirements[0] and a pandemic, which made it super-unclear which issue was more relevant to the seemingly-interminable wait of years.
The instructions are vague in the best of times, and even immigration lawyers have no idea what a given USCIS staffer will care about on any given day. A rejection can mean anything from another year or two in the queue to a demand to leave the country and the life you've built within 30 days, so the stakes are high.
In my most recent application packet, I did include a photo I wouldn't publish online. While it featured no nudity, it was taken in bed. The same photo rotates through a digital frame on my desk in a house with a child in it, so it's by no means risque, but that is why people send in photos you might consider unwise.
0. I can't think about this without offering my best wishes and condolences to Mrs. Miller, who married the architect of that immigration nonsense the same year I married my partner.
I did, and submitted a lot of photos (some are in the bedroom but don't feature any nudity), evidence of living together, travel plans, bank statements of joint accounts for the past few years, marriage cert, witnesses who has statutory declaration. it is time consuming, but i would never think of submitting nudes.
Maybe it helps for some people, but if that's the case then the system is rigged
We hired an immigration lawyer for this most recent process, and he told me a story.
There had been a large group of people from a particular country who all attended a church together here in the US. They had affidavits and bank statements and so on, but most or all of the photos were actually group photos in which the happy couple were circled.
Somehow it all came unraveled, and it turns out that the couples weren't couples at all. They were all as a group close enough to share bank accounts and addresses and so on, but not romantically. Very, very strange, the details I was able to get, but that's another wrinkle.
I think yes, the system is rigged, but also, a lot of people want to immigrate pretty desperately. In some cases, that leads to lying about romantic relationships, and in others, apparently, going way out their way to prove they are not lying about that part!
If you have to ask, you have no idea how complicated and messy the immigration law is. I talked to tenured immigration lawyers that either didn't sound like they understand the law at all, or outright admitted that they do not understand the law. Your lawyer can recommend you something and it can be wrong and you can lose the entire case you built the last 10 years with no recourse and have to leave your life/spouse (happened to people I know). Do not underestimate how confusing this process is, and when things are confusing, humans make mistakes.
No shit, what are these people thinking? after all of the years of hardwork to get the citizenship, they would just send it for what? for fun??
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