Ooner et. al., the things INS does to check up are relatively straightforward, and there’s much less of the “what color is her toothbrush?” kind of question than you might think. IANAL, but I used to be an interpreter in Immigration Court for cases like these, and the questions tend towards the “how did you meet? is she on your health/life insurance? have you met her family/friends/co-workers, and do they know you’re married? do you have any joint bank/credit accounts, and have you ever made any major purchases together?” Or sometimes, even “so what attracted you to him/her in the first place?”
However, I think one would have to be pretty boneheaded not to be able to fool INS (not that I would ever recommend such a thing, of course!).
Maybe we just had a really skewed sample because we were seeing the ones that ended up in deportation proceedings, but my personal favorite had to be the one where some sharp-eyed INS investigator noticed that the name of the father listed on the birth certificate of the children born immediately before and during the marriage was the husband’s brother, who was married to someone else. Under questioning, the wife admitted that she’d been having an affair with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife, and he’d asked her to do him a little favor by marrying his brother so he could stay in the U.S. She complied, but when asked whether the marriage had ever been consummated, the answer was, “No way did I ever let that jerrk lay a hand on me!” (Why she let the jerk’s brother impregnate her, twice, however, was apparently another story."
When the “husband” was questioned, however, his reponse was, “Yes, we consummated many times!” And when asked why he married a woman who had given birth to his brother’s child less than a month before, his response: “Well, at first I was upset, but then I decided I really loved her, so I forgave her.” (By this point, I couldn’t decide whether to puke or fall on the floor laughing.) He could not, however, articulate anything about what had attracted him to her or even how they had met.
It’s true, folks, some people really are that stupid. As for whether legitimate marriages are intentionally targeted: I doubt it, although I don’t know how one would obtain reliable information on that point. In my 3+ years in immigration court, though, I saw maybe 2 marriage fraud cases where I thought the couple might conceivably have been legit. I think the rest of the time, either the marriage is legit, or the parties aren’t quite that totally stupid.