4 ms·

My housemate works as a marriage registrar. I just asked him what percentage of marriages in our local area are primarily for visa exchange purposes. He said "

by ronaldx 13y ago

My housemate works as a marriage registrar. I just asked him what percentage of marriages in our local area are primarily for visa exchange purposes. He said "a majority". I think this article makes an assumption that it's normal/preferable to get married. It misses the fact that there are now very few reasons for a happy, two-earner household with children to actually get married. Marriage papers are in no way a required part of a stable and loving relationship. People don't often get married today unless there's some real political benefit to them: inheritance is becoming less important and free movement of labour is now one of the major motivators.

kenjackson 13y ago
The amount if paperwork required to get married is quite small, compared to something like buying a car. The overall cost of getting married is small. The signal if one person in the relationship refuses to get married is probably strong. If both people refuse to get married it is a non issue, but I suspect that is still not the norm.
- pekk 13y ago
  The cost of getting married isn't small when you include the probability and cost of divorce. (Or the consequences of not getting a divorce when everyone is miserable and fighting)
  - beagle3 13y ago
    Those costs are associated with a civil union. In most western countries, and in many states, having had kids together and/or a joint bank account is enough to have the same divorce consequences in separation. More info in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage
    - Crito 13y ago
      Only 9 states still have common-law marriage, most that have historically recognized it have since thankfully abolished it. Of course if you have kids, you still have to worry about child support, which can be very problematic in several states, but that is a whole other can of worms.
      - beagle3 13y ago
        It all depends on the circumstances. In the country I now reside in, there is little difference between common law marriage, "official" marriage, and civil union - if you have no kids, and divorce/separate within 7-8 years, then each partner gets what they brought in (and any substantially "joint" income during the same time, e.g. appreciation of an apartment, unless otherwise agreed upon in advance, is split 50/50) . If you are married and/or crossed to the 15-20 year area unmarried, then any income generated during the "united" period (including retirement accounts, pension funds, etc) is assumed 50/50, but anything before (and inheritances) go back to whoever brought them in. Prenups, of course, take precedence although some have been nullified by courts as being unreasonable (mostly in cases where the prenups says in the event of a divorce wife gets little/nothing, but then separation comes e.g. after 20 years of marriage/union and giving up a career to raise 4 kids with husband's approval and support).
wavefunction 13y ago
Until your significant other gets injured and you try to show up at the hospital to make the decisions any married couple is allowed to make. That is _one_ of the issues you will face as an unmarried "partnership." This is also the reason why those uppity gays are not content with the crumbs of "social unions." Non-married couples do not have the same rights as married couples. of course this is US-centric
- Retric 13y ago
  If you think ahead, you can give someone those rights without marring them. The only real exclusive benefit is sharing healthcare and retirement benefits which is far less significant in a two income household.
  - judk 13y ago
    In the USA, there are laws in the way. You can't sign a contract with a hospital giving you the right to visit your partner. Not in practice.
  - auctiontheory 13y ago
    Off the top of my head, I could probably come up with a thousand potential problems with living together unmarried (in the US). Here's a big one: if you work for any church-based organization (and they are huge employers, e.g. operating large schools, hospitals and universities), they might fire you because they suddenly decide you are violating some arcane religious doctrine. Now you might say "I didn't want to work there anyway," but that's not how life works for most people who are not well-paid twenty-something software engineers.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  > Until your significant other gets injured and you try to show up at the hospital to make the decisions any married couple is allowed to make. Sure, it depends on the law in your local area. As non-married couples gain rights, it removes reasons for people to get married. Whatever additional rights you get for being married are your primary motivator: that's what I was trying to say. Here, it seems primarily to be EU work visas.
VLM 13y ago
"It misses the fact that there are now very few reasons..." I'm going to take the wild guess you're male. As an old married guy with a daughter I can assure you there is enormous investment in advertising money to specifically get females interested in spending around the cost of a cheap new car to get married. I'm not even claiming this is a large part of the reason for marriage propaganda, however, thousands of advertising dollars are spent to convince females that spending tens of thousands on a wedding would be a great idea. Probably fairly heteronormative and once civilization arrives and gay marriage is more widely "permitted" then we'll start to see a lot more advertising dollars spent convincing guys that spending $10K on a wedding is fabulous. And if you think marriage is expensive, try divorce. My wife and I paid about $10K for our wedding, and felt we cheap skated out on a few things. This kind of social pressure is fine when its only about one months income, but for poor people, its kind of a dumb social policy. Giving the same $10K to the educational-industrial complex or real estate/banking industries isn't going to improve their lot in life either, so its puzzling. One interesting thing to think about is our marriage was basically a little ceremony followed by two co-located family reunions, and it cost about $10K. In comparison a couple years ago my wife hosted and organized a family reunion at a city park for her family, about as many people attended, and our out of pocket was $82 for a park pavilion rental. So we're looking at almost two orders of magnitude of cost inefficiency. There is a large market full of money to solve the difficult problem of providing a storybook princess wedding to women for something between $10K and $100. This is not exactly a stereotypical YC startup idea, but SOMEONE is eventually going to do it and rake in the cash. Having been a starving student and starting out on a low salary in a medium cost of living area, I assure you there are very few investments available. If I have $10M there are plenty of interesting ways to invest it to improve my life, but if I have $100 laying around there's almost nothing to do with it that is not brainless consumerism or basically throwing it away. You can't bootstrap yourself if you can't invest in any way. Maybe microlending will help, although seems like lots of scams in the field. You'd think advanced computerization and networking would force microinvestment and microtransactions into the financial markets, but you'd be totally wrong. Check the price of NYSE:BRK.A and get back to me. We keep people poor by preventing them from having a profitable use for small amounts of excess money. There's probably a startup idea in there somewhere... a bitcoin powered stock exchange where you can trade any rational fraction of a stock or something like that.
rbehrends 13y ago
I'd like to see a citation for that rather than anecdotal evidence. There were a bit over 2 million marriages in the US in 2012. There were some 27k K-1 visas issued in 2012 (there were more IR-1 and CR-1 visas, but those are generally issued to people who married abroad). I don't know the numbers on change of status applications, but I doubt they'd be an order of magnitude higher, especially given that if you're not on an immigrant visa already, you may be in for additional scrutiny.
- VLM 13y ago
  I'm guessing this is one of those legendary examples where startups consisting of young urban professionals only know of, and only attempt to solve young urban professional problems. In SV, or maybe Manhattan, or Mt View, that anecdote is probably true, but in the rest of the country the situation is a rounding error.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  I think you already recognise that this anecdote is difficult or impossible to measure, but let's try e.g. http://www.immigrationboards.com/ireland/large-number-of-sham-marriages-uncovered-t31286.html http://www.immigrationboards.com/ireland/large-number-of-sha... Here is a politician admitting that 3% of Irish marriages are 'sham': http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ Edited to clarify: Not a majority, but 'sham' is a far stronger condition than what I'm talking about. This represents evidence that people are motivated to get married for residency: but the type of marriage I am talking about is not counted in these stats (those where marriage papers are motivated by a genuine goal to live in the same country as your partner).
  - rbehrends 13y ago
    3% is not even remotely "a majority".
  - rsynnott 13y ago
    > Here is a politician admitting that 3% of Irish marriages are 'sham': http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ He's not a politician, he's a civil servant, and he's not admitting it, he's claiming it. And 3% is, erm, a very, very long way from a majority.

by ronaldx 13y ago

kenjackson 13y ago

The amount if paperwork required to get married is quite small, compared to something like buying a car. The overall cost of getting married is small. The signal if one person in the relationship refuses to get married is probably strong. If both people refuse to get married it is a non issue, but I suspect that is still not the norm.

pekk 13y ago
The cost of getting married isn't small when you include the probability and cost of divorce. (Or the consequences of not getting a divorce when everyone is miserable and fighting)
- beagle3 13y ago
  Those costs are associated with a civil union. In most western countries, and in many states, having had kids together and/or a joint bank account is enough to have the same divorce consequences in separation. More info in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage
  - Crito 13y ago
    Only 9 states still have common-law marriage, most that have historically recognized it have since thankfully abolished it. Of course if you have kids, you still have to worry about child support, which can be very problematic in several states, but that is a whole other can of worms.
    - beagle3 13y ago
      It all depends on the circumstances. In the country I now reside in, there is little difference between common law marriage, "official" marriage, and civil union - if you have no kids, and divorce/separate within 7-8 years, then each partner gets what they brought in (and any substantially "joint" income during the same time, e.g. appreciation of an apartment, unless otherwise agreed upon in advance, is split 50/50) . If you are married and/or crossed to the 15-20 year area unmarried, then any income generated during the "united" period (including retirement accounts, pension funds, etc) is assumed 50/50, but anything before (and inheritances) go back to whoever brought them in. Prenups, of course, take precedence although some have been nullified by courts as being unreasonable (mostly in cases where the prenups says in the event of a divorce wife gets little/nothing, but then separation comes e.g. after 20 years of marriage/union and giving up a career to raise 4 kids with husband's approval and support).

wavefunction 13y ago

Until your significant other gets injured and you try to show up at the hospital to make the decisions any married couple is allowed to make. That is _one_ of the issues you will face as an unmarried "partnership." This is also the reason why those uppity gays are not content with the crumbs of "social unions." Non-married couples do not have the same rights as married couples. of course this is US-centric

Retric 13y ago
If you think ahead, you can give someone those rights without marring them. The only real exclusive benefit is sharing healthcare and retirement benefits which is far less significant in a two income household.
- judk 13y ago
  In the USA, there are laws in the way. You can't sign a contract with a hospital giving you the right to visit your partner. Not in practice.
- auctiontheory 13y ago
  Off the top of my head, I could probably come up with a thousand potential problems with living together unmarried (in the US). Here's a big one: if you work for any church-based organization (and they are huge employers, e.g. operating large schools, hospitals and universities), they might fire you because they suddenly decide you are violating some arcane religious doctrine. Now you might say "I didn't want to work there anyway," but that's not how life works for most people who are not well-paid twenty-something software engineers.
ronaldx 13y ago
> Until your significant other gets injured and you try to show up at the hospital to make the decisions any married couple is allowed to make. Sure, it depends on the law in your local area. As non-married couples gain rights, it removes reasons for people to get married. Whatever additional rights you get for being married are your primary motivator: that's what I was trying to say. Here, it seems primarily to be EU work visas.

VLM 13y ago

"It misses the fact that there are now very few reasons..." I'm going to take the wild guess you're male. As an old married guy with a daughter I can assure you there is enormous investment in advertising money to specifically get females interested in spending around the cost of a cheap new car to get married. I'm not even claiming this is a large part of the reason for marriage propaganda, however, thousands of advertising dollars are spent to convince females that spending tens of thousands on a wedding would be a great idea. Probably fairly heteronormative and once civilization arrives and gay marriage is more widely "permitted" then we'll start to see a lot more advertising dollars spent convincing guys that spending $10K on a wedding is fabulous. And if you think marriage is expensive, try divorce. My wife and I paid about $10K for our wedding, and felt we cheap skated out on a few things. This kind of social pressure is fine when its only about one months income, but for poor people, its kind of a dumb social policy. Giving the same $10K to the educational-industrial complex or real estate/banking industries isn't going to improve their lot in life either, so its puzzling. One interesting thing to think about is our marriage was basically a little ceremony followed by two co-located family reunions, and it cost about $10K. In comparison a couple years ago my wife hosted and organized a family reunion at a city park for her family, about as many people attended, and our out of pocket was $82 for a park pavilion rental. So we're looking at almost two orders of magnitude of cost inefficiency. There is a large market full of money to solve the difficult problem of providing a storybook princess wedding to women for something between $10K and $100. This is not exactly a stereotypical YC startup idea, but SOMEONE is eventually going to do it and rake in the cash. Having been a starving student and starting out on a low salary in a medium cost of living area, I assure you there are very few investments available. If I have $10M there are plenty of interesting ways to invest it to improve my life, but if I have $100 laying around there's almost nothing to do with it that is not brainless consumerism or basically throwing it away. You can't bootstrap yourself if you can't invest in any way. Maybe microlending will help, although seems like lots of scams in the field. You'd think advanced computerization and networking would force microinvestment and microtransactions into the financial markets, but you'd be totally wrong. Check the price of NYSE:BRK.A and get back to me. We keep people poor by preventing them from having a profitable use for small amounts of excess money. There's probably a startup idea in there somewhere... a bitcoin powered stock exchange where you can trade any rational fraction of a stock or something like that.

rbehrends 13y ago

I'd like to see a citation for that rather than anecdotal evidence. There were a bit over 2 million marriages in the US in 2012. There were some 27k K-1 visas issued in 2012 (there were more IR-1 and CR-1 visas, but those are generally issued to people who married abroad). I don't know the numbers on change of status applications, but I doubt they'd be an order of magnitude higher, especially given that if you're not on an immigrant visa already, you may be in for additional scrutiny.

VLM 13y ago
I'm guessing this is one of those legendary examples where startups consisting of young urban professionals only know of, and only attempt to solve young urban professional problems. In SV, or maybe Manhattan, or Mt View, that anecdote is probably true, but in the rest of the country the situation is a rounding error.
ronaldx 13y ago
I think you already recognise that this anecdote is difficult or impossible to measure, but let's try e.g. http://www.immigrationboards.com/ireland/large-number-of-sham-marriages-uncovered-t31286.html http://www.immigrationboards.com/ireland/large-number-of-sha... Here is a politician admitting that 3% of Irish marriages are 'sham': http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ Edited to clarify: Not a majority, but 'sham' is a far stronger condition than what I'm talking about. This represents evidence that people are motivated to get married for residency: but the type of marriage I am talking about is not counted in these stats (those where marriage papers are motivated by a genuine goal to live in the same country as your partner).
- rbehrends 13y ago
  3% is not even remotely "a majority".
- rsynnott 13y ago
  > Here is a politician admitting that 3% of Irish marriages are 'sham': http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0728/465110-sham-marriages/ He's not a politician, he's a civil servant, and he's not admitting it, he's claiming it. And 3% is, erm, a very, very long way from a majority.