WASHINGTON — The US Justice Department on Wednesday (Aug 12) charged 11 people in a decade-long scheme that arranged about 1,000 sham marriages to allow mostly Chinese nationals to achieve legal immigration status in the US, according to court documents.
Foreign nationals paid a group of six "facilitators" as much as US$100,000 (S$127,980) each to be paired up with a US citizen and obtain legal residency, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
US citizens were paid as much as US$30,000 to agree to the marriages, according to the indictment.
Participants in the scheme then helped the newlyweds submit paperwork to the US Department of Homeland Security to allow the Chinese national to become a lawful permanent resident.
Attorney General Todd Blanche described the scheme as "one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in US history" and said it showed "how far people will go to cheat our immigration system".
The announcement follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last week aimed at restricting "birth tourism", after the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of broad citizenship rights for babies born in the United States.
The State Department said on Wednesday it started an effort to review the activities of visa holders with the aim of cracking down on women coming to the US solely to attain citizenship for their child.
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