Immigration wedding scam discovered in Arlington, VA

Washington Post:

They didn't hug. They didn't kiss. They didn't even sit together.

Many couples going to the Arlington County Courthouse seemed more like strangers than people applying for marriage licenses. A man named Sam often escorted them to the sixth-floor clerk's office. Sometimes, there would be a furtive exchange of money in the elevator.

Before long, some of the same people would be back, filing for divorce, their court papers littered with mistakes -- always the same mistakes.

"They misspelled 'circuit,' " said David A. Bell, the longtime Circuit Court clerk. "It was obvious something was going on."

Bell tipped off police, triggering a nearly four-year investigation that recently broke up one of the Washington region's biggest and most brazen immigration scams: an estimated 1,000 fake marriages. The scheme was centered in the area's little-noticed but rapidly growing community of immigrants from Ghana.

For immigrants, marrying a U.S. citizen is a quick ticket to citizenship. Along the East Coast and all the way to West Africa, at car dealerships, malls, parties and even a Home Depot, the word had spread: If you are in the United States illegally, go to Arlington. It's easy to get married in Virginia, because marriage laws are relatively lax. Arlington, with its proximity to the Metro system and the District, is especially convenient.

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It is a long story with a description of how the scam worked. The US citizens were paid $500 to marry the Ghana immigrants who were in turn charged $3,000 to $3,500 to arrange the "weddings." Why would all those people from Ghana be so eager to come to a country like the US? They must have found out that it si a place with more opportunities than their home in Africa. Imagine that.