Oregon "first lady" green-card marriage scam enabled by quick unilateral no-fault divorce

Just sayin'. We get a lot of these green-card marriages here in the DC area, and they would hardly be conceiveable without laws that make people assume - - often mistakenly - - that divorce will be easy and will automatically be granted when either spouse asks for it. These marriages cannot qualify for annulments unless one spouse can show that they were truly innocent, believed in the marriage, and were defrauded by the foreign suitor. Divorces in such marriages might be easy or might be ugly, hard and expensive: one never knows at the beginning, since it takes two to have an amicable divorce.

Oregon First Lady Married for Cash, but Don’t Expect Prosecution

Cylvia Hayes, fiancée of John Kizhaber, took $5,000 in 1997 to marry an Ethiopian teen for a green card, she said Friday—but the news isn’t likely to sink the governor’s reelection.

 

By Tim Mak in The Daily Beast, 10/10/14