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Russian Green Card Marriages Are Big Biz in NY
By Drew Nelles
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Posted Jul 19, 09 4:34 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Russian women are so eager for green cards that one New York-area weekly devotes an entire page to marriage ads, the New York Post reports. A Post reporter, posing as an immigrant angling for a green card, contacted a marriage broker and got the going rate: $31,500, $6,500 of which goes to the broker. "It's a big business," one official admits. "It's really prevalent among that community."
Officials interview immigrant couples to detect sham marriages, but it "goes really easy," the broker assured the reporter. And there’s ample incentive to enter a so-called “business marriage,” or delavoy brok. "I get calls asking me to marry one of these girls every other week," one Ukranian-American man says. "It's easy money. And the girls are really hot."