Big Business: Marrying for Green Cards

An increasing number of Russian and Eastern European immigrants are coming to the U.S. and entering into fake marriages in order to obtain green cards, according to the New York Post .

The Post reports that Russian-language newspaper the Russian Advertiser has an entire classified-ad section devoted to "business marriages."

Marriage brokers are used to help green-card seekers through the process. According to a federal law-enforcement source, the practice is prevalent in certain Eastern European and Russian immigrant neighborhoods in New York City.

"I get calls asking me to marry one of these girls every other week," said one Ukrainian immigrant, who came to Brooklyn in 1975 and is a U.S. citizen.

The brokers charge between $25,000 and $35,000 to arrange the "marriages."

In a recent survey conducted by dating Web sites Matchmaker.com, Amor.com and Date.com, 60 percent of respondents said they'd marry someone so that they could stay in the country.

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