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WASHINGTON (AP) – Thousands of men's requests sent to the United States to marry children and teenage girls have been approved over the past decade, according to government data obtained by The Associated Press. In one case, a 49-year-old man asked for the admission of a 15-year-old girl
Authorizations are legal: the law on immigration and nationality does not set any conditions. minimum age. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services checks whether the marriage is legal in the country of origin and whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner resides.
But the data raises questions about whether the immigration system allows for forced marriage and how US laws can exacerbate the problem despite efforts to limit child marriage and forced marriage . Marriage between adults and minors is not uncommon in the United States, and most states allow children to marry with certain restrictions.
There were more than 5,000 cases of adults making an application on behalf of minors and almost 3,000 examples of minors wanting to bring in minors. older spouses or fiances, according to data requested by the Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2017 and compiled in a report.
Some victims of forced marriage claim that the lure of an American passport, combined with weak US marriage laws, partly fuels petitions.
"My passport ruined my life," said Naila Amin, a dual Pakistani national who grew up. in New York
In Pakistan, at the age of 13, she married forcibly and asked for papers for her husband, aged 26, to come to the country.
"People are dying to come to America," she said. "I was a passport for him.
Amin, now aged 29, said she was engaged to her first cousin, Tariq, while she was only 8 years old and only 4 years old. he was 21 years old. he escaped. She said that the ordeal had cost her a childhood. She was in foster homes and group homes, and she was slow to get back on track.
"I was a child. I want to know: why did not we raise red flags? Whoever dealt with this request did not look at it? Amin asked.
There is a two-step process for obtaining immigration visas and green cards in the United States. Applications are first reviewed by the USCIS. If they are granted, they must be approved by the state department. A total of 3.5 million petitions were received for fiscal years 2007 to 2017.
During this period, 5,556 approvals were granted to persons seeking to bring minor wives or fiancées, and 2 926 approvals of minors wishing to bring in older wives, according to the data. In addition, there were 204 minors. Petitions can be submitted by US citizens or permanent residents.
"This indicates a problem. This indicates a loophole that we must bridge, "Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin told AP to the chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee.
In almost all cases, girls were the youngest in the relationship. . The committee found that in 149 cases, the adult was over 40 years old and in 28 cases he was over 50 years old. Examples include: In 2011, immigration officials approved a 14-year application to a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica. A petition from a 71-year-old man was approved in Guatemala for his 17-year-old wife in Guatemala in 2013.
There are no national statistics on child marriage, but the Some states data suggest that it is far from rare. State laws generally set 18 as the minimum age for marriage, but each state allows exceptions. Most states allow young people between the ages of 16 and 17 to marry if they have parental permission, and several states, including New York, Virginia and Maryland, allow children under the age of 16 to marry with the court's permission.
Fraidy Reiss, who is campaigning against marriage coercion at the head of a group called Unchained at Last, has been researching data from her home state, New Jersey. It determined that around 4,000 minors, mostly girls, were married in that state between 1995 and 2012, of whom 178 were under the age of 15.
"It's a problem, both nationally and in terms of immigration," she said. Reiss – who claims that her Orthodox Jewish family forced her to marry violently at the age of 19 – stated that, often, child marriage based on parental consent involves the constraint, with a girl forced to marry against her will.
subjected to a life of domestic servitude and rape, "she said. "And the government is not only an accomplice; they put it down and say, Go ahead.
Data was requested in 2017 by Johnson and Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, the highest democracy on the committee. Johnson added that it had taken a year to get the information, showing that it was necessary to put in place a more efficient system to track and review petitions.
"Our immigration system could unintentionally protect abuses against women and children," said the senators in their letter.
USCIS did not know how many approvals had been granted by the state department, but overall, only about 2.6% of spousal or fiancée compensation claims were dismissed. green cards to live in the United States during the same 10-year period
USCIS President, L. Francis Cissna, said in a letter to the committee that his application had raised issues and concerns. discussions within the agency about what she could do. to prevent forced marriages. The agency noticed some problems in the way the data was collected and solved them. Officials have also created a signage system that requires verification of the date of birth whenever a minor is detected
The country from which mainly comes requests is Mexico, followed by Pakistan, Jordan, the Dominican Republic and Yemen. Middle Eastern nationals had the highest percentage of approved aggregate applications.
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