Continuing with the illegal immigrant topic, I have received several inquiries regarding the citizenship status of an illegal immigrant who marries a U.S. citizen. Many people believe that marrying a U.S. citizen automatically makes them a citizen. This is not true.

A U.S. citizen may file an “alien relative petition” on behalf of his or her foreign-born spouse and, if the spouse meets the eligibility requirements for the immigrant visa, or “green card,” the visa is made available to the spouse immediately based upon this close family relationship. However, this only gets the spouse a green card. He or she still must go through the naturalization process, explained briefly last week, to become a citizen.

To get approval for the alien relative petition, both citizen and spouse should be of marriageable age, be free to marry, and provide proof that a valid marriage exists to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS, formerly the INS), or to a U.S. consular post in a country outside the United States that accepts alien relative petitions.

Other issues involving marriage revolve around the marriage fraud factors passed by Congress in 1986 to discourage sham marriages to get around the immigration laws. A list of factors that contribute to a determination by a USCIS examining officer that the parties got married to get around the immigration laws include:

_ Rapid sequence of events like marriage and then divorce immediately thereafter;

_ Age difference (usually 10 years or more);

_ Prior marriages by petitioner to aliens or by aliens to U.S. citizens or lawful permanent resident aliens;

_ Marriage outside ethnic or religious group.

One major requirement in this process is that the immigrant cannot be in the U.S. illegally and obtain these marriage benefits. If the spouse is in the United States, the U.S. citizen spouse files a Petition for Alien Relative and the alien spouse files an Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, along with applications for employment authorization and travel documents to enter the U.S. legally.

Aliens in the United States illegally may marry, but they may not obtain immigration benefits under the normal procedures above. They must eventually leave the United States and obtain a waiver of grounds of inadmissibility. A “waiver” is a promise from the American government that all has been forgiven and, even though you were previously inadmissible to, or removable from, the U.S. you are now allowed to legally be here or re-enter the United States. There are many forms of such waivers and most need to be made together with other applications. The waiver process is a difficult one that requires many hours of careful planning and representation by a qualified immigration lawyer.