I did divorced her but the divorce papers were not finalized cause I was not with here to make sure that everything was done right
One of my marriages took place in Canada, and was dissolved in an American divorce court, and nobody paid the slightest bit of attention to the fact that it was a Canadian marriage.
You will not be deemed to be married in any jurisdiction, unless A) you claim to be married, such as for some benefit, or B) your spouse claims that you are married to him/her, also for some perceived benefit, or C) some third party declares that you are/were married, with some advantage in mind . In other words, if no party declares the existence of a marriage, it can be considered null and void as a practical matter. If you say your are not, the burden is on someone else to prove that you are.
More specific to the OP, any formal/legal marriage anywhere is generally considered to be valid and binding by every jurisdiction, unless there is some glaring discrepancy between the general laws of marriage in the two countries, and the marriage was performed under circumstances in a first country which would not be considered legal in the second country. Such as child bride, same sex, farmyard animal, polygamy, etc. and even then, you might have the burden of proving the marriages invalidity.
I did divorce her but divorce papers were not finalized cause I was not living with her to make sure that everything was done right, and I did get everything done as soon as I found that the divorce was not finalized by going oversees and complete the paper work. This was done more than 15 years ago.
Your marital status is a totally different question from your ability to obtain legal immigration status for your child. Whether or not you were married to the child’s mother your child is still your child. Which issue are you worried about?
I am asking about the ability to obtain legal immigration status for your child.
Then it sounds like you may have a messy situation on your hands, because if I’m understanding your sequence of events correctly, your divorce from your non-U.S. Citizen wife was not final at the time you married your U.S. Citizen wife, through whom you got the green card. So the green card possibly shouldn’t have been approved in the first case.
If that’s true, I seriously suggest consulting with an experienced immigration attorney who is familiar with family law in the state where you married your U.S. Citizen wife. For example, in Illinois your Illinois marriage would be valid as of the date your foreign divorce was final, but that’s not true everywhere.
My firm had a case like this recently, but the client had’t gotten her green card based on marriage, so the incomplete foreign divorce wasn’t an issue for her. But it may well be for you.
Eva Luna, Immigration Paralegal
He doesn’t have a green card anymore; he’s now a citizen himself.
I am a US citizen now… would this be an issue or they might take the citizen from me
It’s possible, if they figure out the actual sequence of events. But OTOH they may never notice. But don’t you want to know what your actual situation is?
They should have picked up on it when you got your green card, because you should have been required to submit a copy of your final foreign divorce decree if you declared you’d been married before. (In the case of my client, she discovered that the attorney in her home country who was supposed to finalize the divorce didn’t do so until years after he told her he had.) Sometimes USCIS doesn’t pick up on these things when they should, but then they catch their mistake later.
Even if this happen long time ago (more than10 years).
What should I do. I know I missed up but need to get it solved.
Not 100% likely, but definitely possible. People are still being deported for not disclosing WWII military service for the Nazis, or more recently, service with the Bosnian Serb Army in the former Yugoslavia.
I think you should see an experienced immigration attorney who can help you sort out whether the timing of your life events is an issue, and if so, how and/or whether it can be fixed. And once that’s straightened out, advise you regarding whether you can petition for your child from your first marriage, and if so, how. Look for an attorney who is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association at a bare minimum.
But his citizenship can be revoked if his green card shouldn’t have been granted to begin with. The question is whether USCIS will ever figure out that they screwed up in the first place.
No I was not. But it happened and I have discovered all of them … would it be okay for me to work on submitting the immigration application
I agree with Eva Luna and you should not even consider submitting your application for your child before you consult with an immigration attorney. If there is a possibility that the USCIS will discover that you were not legally married to your US citizen spouse when they granted you your green card you could really be in hot water. You do not want to attract the attention of the USCIS until you know what the risk is, if any, of filing for your child.
Thanks a lot Carol … I am consulting some one to get what is right…Hope to fine some good lawyer that understand my case and help me out.
Yeah, don’t thank me too much. I’m not really in your corner on this one. To my eye, it appears that you committed fraud either against your US citizen spouse or the US government or both.
How does marriage recognition work if you were married in a country that your current country doesn’t recognize?
For example, does the People’s Republic of China accept Taiwanese marriages or do people have to get married again in the PRC or in a third country that the PRC recognizes? Does Syria accept marriages done in Israel under Israeli law or are couples who cross the border considered fornicators unless they get married in Syria or a country that Syria recognizes?
Here is the Wiki page on diplomatic recognition.
To answer your question about the PRC recognizing marriages contracted in Taiwan: there are a few couples in my church branch here in Beijing who were married in Taiwan. The PRC has granted visa documents to the spouses to join their sponsoring spouse here. None of them was required to re-marry in the PRC or in a third jurisdiction.
If an Israeli is in Syria and all the Syrians note is that their marriage is from a country which they don’t recognize, then the Israelis should thank their lucky stars.
To answer your question, I will refer to my post of 5 years ago. Generally a countries courts/government bodies will recognise a marriage from another country unless there are reasons of public policy which go against recognising said marriage. Usually public policy reasons are i) polygamy and ii) Same sex marriage.
As it is, while I don’t know PRC or Syrian law, I do know that in every jurisdiction that I have seen, if a couple believes and acts like they were married, then in the eyes of the law the are in fact married, nothwitstanding any other irregularity, unless said irregularity renders any marriage void…such as a previous non dissolved marriage,
Non-recognition is a political stance more than a legal one, so what exactly its consequences are depends on the political point that is being made. But in general it works like this:
“We don’t recognise the country of X” doesn’t mean that we pretend the country of X doesn’t exist; it means we don’t think the crowd who, as a matter of reality, govern X have any legitimate claim to do so. This could be because we think some other crowd have a better claim to govern the country of X, or because we think the territory of the country of X should properly be incorporated into a neighbouring state (whcih may well be us).
But none of this means that we ignore the reality that the country of X exists, that it has a population, and that they go about doing things that people do like entering into contracts, getting married, etc. We don’t pretend they’re not doing these things merely because their marriages are being registered by registrars, and their contracts enforced in courts, maintained by a bunch of people that we think should not be running the show. Consequently, if somebody comes into our territory having married in the country of X, in accordance with the laws and customs of that country, he’s married. It doesn’t matter that his marriage was registered by someone we don’t like.