Afghan families paid Afghan men during President Joe Biden’s Kabul airlift to marry their daughters in transactions that would give the Afghan families a chance for chain migration into Americans’ society, according to media reports.
A September 2 report by CNN said:
U.S. officials processing Afghan refugees abroad recently alerted the State Department to instances in which women and girls were forced into marriage or arrived with male partners posing as their husbands to be eligible for evacuation and escape the Taliban, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
In this Aug. 31 , 2021, photo provided by the U.S. Army, Afghan children take a piece of chalk at a children’s activity event held by non-governmental charities at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. U.S. officials are looking into reports that in the frantic evacuation of desperate Afghans from Kabul, older men were admitted together with young girls they claimed as “brides” or otherwise sexually abused. One internal document seen by The Associated Press says the State Department has sought “urgent guidance” from other agencies after purported child brides were brought to Fort McCoy. (Spc. Rhianna Ballenger/U.S. Army via AP)
According to the CNN article, which is titled, “Afghan women report forced marriages to flee country amid Taliban takeover, sources say”:
In some reported instances, families paid men eligible for evacuation thousands of dollars to marry or pose as husbands for women to flee … It’s unclear how widespread the issue is, but it prompted enough concern for US diplomats in the United Arab Emirates to send a cable.
In Afghanistan, wealthy men can wed multiple wives. Families often arrange marriages between cousins to conserve wealth within the extended family. The marriages often bind young girls to older men because women have little or no status in Islamic law. Those diverse cultural norms are being imported with the many unvetted Afghans that Biden and his deputies are airlifting into the United States, according to the Associated Press:
“Intake staff at Fort McCoy [in Wisconsin] reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families,” the document says. “Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”
There was no immediate indication from the military or from the departments of homeland security and health and human services, which run the facility, that such guidance had been received.
Marriage fraud for migration purposes is commonplace because it is extremely lucrative and rational for people born into poor countries, said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“There’s no question that that green card [which allows citizenship] is one of the most valuable assets an ordinary person in the Third World can acquire. And if you can acquire one by forcing your daughter to marry someone … You’ll do it, it makes perfect [economic] sense,” he said.
“There’s no way we’re going to be able to prevent it — we can police it more effectively, to try to prevent abuses, violations of American law,” he said. But Americans should adjust their romanticized, idealized view of migration to recognize how migration creates incentives for fraud and arbitrage, he said.
For example, an Afghan daughter who wins legal residency can work to send money home via remittances to her poor relatives. She can also help relatives enter the United States to work as illegal migrants in sweatshops and stores.
If she gets a green card and citizenship, she can import her parents via chain-migration rules. When they arrive, the parents are eligible for taxpayer support, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. She can also file to put her brothers and sisters — and their minor children — in line for migration and U.S. citizenship.
Over several decades, she can achieve the colossal prize of legally moving much of her extended family — and all of their descendants — from Afghanistan’s mountains, regardless of the huge price imposed on Americans and their children.
The huge economic value of green cards and citizenship is seen in the Indian marriage market, where U.S.-based H-1B visa workers can charge a higher price in arranged marriages among Hindus. EAWorldView.com reported in November 2020:
In India, marriages are a big affair. Lavish and flamboyant ceremonies last for two to four days with a minimum spend of $15,000 to $20,000 by the bride’s family, regardless of their social status.
Demand for US-based grooms in India was high until 2015. However, as soon as Donald Trump administration came into power in 2016, they began changing not only the laws pertaining to H1-B, but also the employment laws that started reflecting on the “Indian Spouse Market”. This eventually led to downward trend in demand for the US-based grooms.
The process sometimes leads to fraud against U.S.-based foreign workers.
Federal officials detect and prosecute cases of marriage fraud from migrants in the West — but they impose very light sentences despite the economic theft. On August 26, for example, the Connecticut Post reported:
A Bridgeport woman was sentenced to six months in prison for arranging fraudulent marriages to help non-U.S. citizens get lawful permanent residence, according to the office of Acting United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut Leonard Boyle.
Boyle’s office said Jodian Stephenson, 37, arranged 28 “sham marriages” between 2011 and 2017. These marriages would consist of a U.S. citizen and a noncitizen so they could receive “lawful permanent residence” status, or a “green card,” according to Boyle’s office.
One of the marriages was between Stephenson, a citizen of Jamaica, and a U.S. citizen. She also introduced 27 other couples to help them receive marriage licenses, Boyle’s office said.
There is also evidence that Biden and his pro-migration progressive deputies allow cartels and coyotes to smuggle poor girls from Central America into the United States to be prostituted for U.S. currency.
The painful clash of immigrants’ incentives and culture with Americans’ society is inevitable, said Krikorian. “This is one of the reasons immigration should be kept low,” Krikorian said, adding:
It’s just easier if there’s one family in a town that comes from a very traditionalist society overseas with what we rightly consider medieval values, it’s a lot easier if there’s just one of them for them to adapt and change and get with the program. If there’s 1,000 of them, it’s easier for them to stick together [and not integrate]. It’s a natural response on their part. It is not even anybody’s fault here.
“It’s just that if you want people to be able to successfully cross that very large social distance [from Afghanistan to America], it’s easier to do if there are smaller numbers,” he said.
In 2021, Biden’s deputies are expected to import roughly 1.6 million legal, temporarily legal, and illegal migrants, roughly double the 2020 inflow under President Donald Trump. That 2021 inflow is roughly 1 migrant for every two American births.
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