Crackdown targets green-card marriages

ATLANTA — When a woman recently asked for a copy of her marriage license, the court clerk in suburban Atlanta's Gwinnett County had to break some unpleasant news: Her husband was listed as the groom in eight marriages in the county.

The husband was later arrested in September on suspicion of bigamy, just days after another man was charged in the same county with similar offenses. Two weeks later, a woman from nearby Decatur was charged with marrying six men in less than two years without ever dissolving her first marriage.

Federal immigration authorities are investigating whether the three defendants were part of a sham-marriage ring aimed at helping immigrants from Africa obtain their green cards, or permanent U.S. residency.

Immigration officials and prosecutors say phony green-card marriages are a common and growing crime, and they are cracking down.

"It took much more significance after 9/11," said Martin Ficke, agent in charge of the New York City office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "With a real green card, you get a lot more access. It's a major priority for ICE."

If the three defendants were part of a green-card scheme, that would not surprise Gwinnett County Probate Court Chief Clerk Marlene Duwell, who has seen plenty of suspicious things among the thousands of people she deals with each year.

Duwell said she has witnessed couples who couldn't converse with each other because of a language barrier, and marriage-license applicants who did not know their future spouse's last name or place of birth. Clerks reports their suspicions to police, which was what happened in the case of the man with eight wives.

Immigration officials focus on sophisticated moneymaking rings, not individuals doing someone else a favor, as in the 1990 romantic comedy "Green Card." In the movie, a Frenchman who wants a green card and a New Yorker who wants an apartment get married, only to fall in love.

Over the past year, authorities have busted large green-card marriage rings from coast to coast that made millions of dollars by providing spouses and fake documents to foreigners.

About one in five of the 3,434 identity and benefit fraud cases Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigated in fiscal year 2005 were marriage fraud, said agency spokesman Marc Raimondi. He said arrest figures were not immediately available.