House OKs proxy marriage in immigration cases

Copied from the Navy Times: Watson Immigration Law will be paying close attention to this bill.

A bill recognizing proxy marriages involving service members in immigration cases passed the House of Representatives on Monday.

The bipartisan legislation is aimed, specifically, at helping the Japanese widow of a Marine killed in Iraq come to the U.S. to raise the couple’s child — but it would change the law for other military couples as well.

Because the couple, married by proxy in 2008, never lived together after the marriage, the marriage is not considered valid under U.S. immigration law because it was not consummated, said Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “There are no exceptions,” Conyers said.

By voice vote and with no debate, the House passed HR 6397, a bill creating an exception for military members who married while deployed.

It is called the Marine Sgt. Michael H. Ferschke Jr. Memorial Act, named for a sergeant who discovered just as he was deploying to Iraq that his Japanese girlfriend, Hota, was pregnant. The couple married in a ceremony conducted over the telephone. About one month later, Ferschke was killed. One month after that, the child, Michael III, was born, according to Conyers.

The Defense Department recognized the marriage, paying death benefits to the widow, but the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration law, did not, said Rep. John Duncan Jr., R-Tenn., the chief sponsor of the bill.

“This is a tragic situation,” he said, noting that the couple had intended to raise their child in Tennessee. The widow’s petition to immigrate to the U.S. to raise the child with the sergeant’s parents was denied, Duncan said. “I think everyone sees the merit in this.”

Conyers said the bill does not eliminate the requirement for consummation of marriage for immigration purposes, but it creases a narrow exception “in cases where the failure to consummate the marriage is caused by a physical separation due to active-duty military service aboard by one of the parties.”

Duncan’s bill is on a fast track. He introduced it on Monday, the first day of the lame duck session of Congress after the elections. It now goes to the Senate, where Duncan is trying to line up support.