Posted on 07/31/2008 1:51:33 PM PDT by Cementjungle
A crackdown on sham marriages is 'in tatters' after the House of Lords ruled that it breaches the human rights of immigrants.
Law Lords said forcing a migrant to prove a relationship is genuine is 'arbitrary and unjust', even if they were getting married only weeks before their permission to stay in Britain ran out.
Foreigners will now once again be free to prolong their stay in the UK by getting married at the last minute to a person who already has permission to live here.
(Excerpt) Read more at thisislondon.co.uk ...
Also, God forbid any of us on either side of the Atlantic should actually enforce our laws, let alone expect these people to value living under the Rule of Law. See my tagline.
Just another example of why government should have no involvement in or recognition of marriage whatsoever. If you’re determined to “marry” someone who doesn’t have the right to live in your native country, then you’ll just have to move to their country, or to some third country that is willing to let both of you live there. The notions that government should 1) be in the business of determining who is “really in love” with whom, and 2) be according privileges to foreigners based on the bureaucratic determination of whether the foreigner and citizen are “really in love”, are beyond ludicrous.
So the government should be able to tell people they can’t marry foreigners? That’s basically what you seem to be suggesting because if the government says you can’t live here with your spouse if you marry a foreigner then for all intents and purposes its telling you you can’t marry a foreigner. I think the way we do it is okay. You can marry a foreigner if you want. Your spouse gets a conditional green card. After several years of marriage and cohabitation the conditions can be removed, and a few years later if they learn English and stay out of trouble they can apply for citizenship. The system we have probably cuts out most of the fraud.
The government should be able to tell people they can’t harbor illegal aliens (yeah, novel concept, I know). Whether a citizen of a foreign country is allowed to live here legally is a decision the government should make based on the qualities of that individual foreigner, not on whether a citizen of the host country represents to the government that s/he is “genuinely in love with”,”’married’ to” or “planning to ‘marry’”, “planning to have/raise children with” the foreigner. None of these personal issues are any of government’s business, and needless to say, they are all things that can faked and/or changed. I’m sure lots of foreigners really do convince themselves they’re “in love with” a US or UK citizen, and then proceed to convince the US or UK citizen that the feeling is mutual, even when what’s really going on is that the foreigner is in love with dreams of living in the US or UK.
No, we’d be telling him that the woman needs to apply for permission to live here on her own merits. If she can’t meet the standards, then maybe he should reconsider why he thinks he wants to be married to her.
They do have to apply to live here on their merits. If they can’t meet the standards, they can’t come. They’re going to get interviewed, have criminal background checks done, the works.
If we want them here on their merits, why do we care if they’re “married” or planning to be “married” to one of our citizens?
What is this “merits” nonsense you keep talking about? We don't let people immigrate based on their merits. There is no “merit visa.” Our immigration laws are a confusing mess and there are exception to exceptions, but for the most part you cannot come to the U.S. as an immigrant unless you have close family here. You might be able to come as a tourist or a student, but not as an immigrant. Employment based visas, like the H-1B visa, are nonimmigrant visas. If you just want immigrate to the United States and you have no family here, odds are you will not ever get a visa, no matter how awesome a person you might be or how meritorious your life has been.
Let me give you a specific example. I spoke with a young man the other day who recently come back from a tour of duty Iraq. While he was there he met a Filipino lady working there in some sort of contract job in support of the war effort. I don't remember what her job was exactly, but it was something fancy. She has several advanced degrees and speaks several languages fluently. She's a really bright lady. Anyway, those two want to get married and he is in the process of doing a K-1 fiance visa to get her over here. Now, if that K-1 visa was not available, she'd never be able to come. She has no family here. Filipinos aren't even eligible to participate in the visa lottery program where they have a tiny chance of getting a visa without family in this country. Even if she had a citizen brother or sister in the U.S. who could sponsor her, she'd be looking at something like 20 years or more before she could come over. The only way she's going to be able to come over is with that K-1 fiance visa. She could be Mother Theresa but she's still never coming over just on her merits.
Do you see what I'm saying here? There is no “merit visa.” Most people in the world could never get an immigrant visa allowing them to move to the U.S. There is a very limited visa lottery program where a few visas are given out every year to “promote diversity,” but only a tiny few visas are awarded relative to the number of people who put their names in the hat, and several countries are excluded from the program because more than 50,000 immigrants have come in from those countries within the five years preceding the drawing. So Mexicans, Canadians, Chinese, Indians, Filipinos, people from the U.K. and several other countries like that from which we get a lot of immigrants will never be eligible to participate in the visa lottery program. The only way these people are going to get in is through family based immigrant petitions or by coming over here on a work visa like an H-1B and shooting for legal permanent resident status, converting from nonimmigrant to immigrant status, after being here for several years. No one just gets to move here on their merits because they are good people. It just doesn't work that way.
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