Raw Transcript:

Introduction: You ask we answer your immigration questions. Simple. And now your host immigration lawyer Jacob Sapochnick.

Jacob: This question is actually coming from San Diego, California and Roberta is asking what is the penalty, what are the consequences of a US citizen who marries a foreign national if it’s a sham marriage? If the four national pays the US citizen to get married.

Well Roberta, this is a very complex area of law. Immigration, especially in the past couple of years, I’ve been fighting sham marriages vigorously. A US citizen who is caught or determine that they married a foreign national for the sole purpose to evade immigration can be penalized, very high fines, up to half a million dollars and actually end up in prison. If they actually prove that the case was deliberately designed to evade immigration consequences.

We never encourage anybody to get into a sham marriage. Those are very, very severe consequences. If such case actually is determined to be a sham marriage … There’s a lot of confusion out there people are … they assume that it’s really question of just providing some paperwork, a few documents of join marriage. Immigration … the immigration service, they’re actually going to a lot of efforts to detect a forge on marriages and they their own ways to do so.

To answer your question, you can go to prison or actually end up paying a very high fine if that is the path you decide to go.

Closing: Thank you for listening to the Ask My Immigration Lawyer Podcast, the show that’s dedicated to answering your immigration questions. Simple as that. See you next week for another round of questions and much needed answers.