Green card marriage is a neologism that refers to the marriage of convenience between a legal resident of the United States of America and a person who would be ineligible for residency but for being married to the resident.

Description

The term derives from the availability of permanent resident documents ("Green cards") for spouses of legal residents in the United States, where marriage is one of the fastest and surest ways to obtain legal residence. Marriages, if legitimate, entitle the spouse to live and work in the United States, as in most other countries. In the United States, 2.3 million marriage visas were approved from 1998 through 2007, representing 25% of all green cards in 2007. Even if the non-resident spouse was previously an illegal immigrant, marriage entitles the spouse to residency, generally without the waiting time required for persons caught being in the United States illegally.

Legality

The practice of obtaining residency through marriage is illegal in the United States if the marriage itself is fraudulent. A marriage that is solely for purposes of obtaining legal residence is considered a sham, and is a crime in the United States for both participants. A 2008 study by the Center for Immigration Studies cited consular officials who estimated that between 5% and 30% of all marriages between American residents and foreign nationals were fraudulent, but that very few of these marriages were detected or acted upon.

Green card may refer to:

Documents

Art, entertainment, and media

Sports

A green card was the abbreviated name given to the IBM/360 Reference data card that served as the shorthand "bible" for programmers during the late 1960s and 1970s. It rapidly became an icon of the 360 era of programming and was later replaced by the "yellow card". The same concept was also later used for an "orange card" for CICS application programming - that showed some internal CICS data structures and their relationships.

Card contents

The reference card contained details of all assembler instructions and other 360 "essential facts" condensed to a very convenient fold-up, pocket sized format:-

References

External links

Green Card is a 1990 romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by Peter Weir and starring Gérard Depardieu and Andie MacDowell. The screenplay focuses on an American woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a Frenchman so he can obtain a green card and remain in the United States. Depardieu won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Plot summary

Brontë Parrish (MacDowell), a horticulturalist and an environmentalist, enters into a sham marriage with Georges Fauré (Depardieu), an illegal alien from France, so he may obtain a green card. In turn, Brontë uses her fake marriage credentials to rent the apartment of her dreams. After moving in, to explain her spouse's absence, she tells the doorman and neighbors he is conducting musical research in Africa.

Contacted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for an interview to determine if her marriage is legitimate, Brontë tracks down Georges, who is working as a waiter. Although the two have little time to get their facts straight, the agents who question them appear to be satisfied with their answers. But when one of the agents asks to use the bathroom and Georges directs him to a closet, their suspicions are aroused, and they schedule a full, formal interview to be conducted two days later at their office.