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Article:
When Marriage Is Not Enough: Facing Deportation Because of Your Spouse by: Heather L. Poole Under U.S. immigration law, immigrants may obtain a green card ('U.S. permanent residence'¯) by marrying a U.S. citizen. The U.S. citizen must, however under the normal course, petition U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (CIS, formerly known as 'INS'¯) for an immigrant visa and a green card application for his/her immigrant spouse based on the marriage. This process once completed leads to the immigrant's attainment of U.S. permanent residency '“ i.e., permission to work and live in the U.S. on a permanent basis. But this process is not always beneficial to the immigrant '“ in many instances, it provides one of the most abusive ways a sponsoring spouse can exercise control over the immigrant, by holding the immigrant's tentative immigration status over her. A commonality in almost all abusive marriages involving an immigrant spouse is the threat of deportation, often in the form of the abusive U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse threatening to withdraw his/her sponsorship of the immigrant's visa petition, not file at all, or contact CIS and lie about her in an attempt to have her deported. Often, immigrants are given the ultimatum that they either tell no one about the abuse and thereby, let is continue, or else face deportation. This threat of deportation, a form of severe psychological abuse, can be more terrifying to an immigrant than even the worst physical abuse imaginable. Many immigrants have children and family members in the U.S. who rely on them and many fear returning to the country they escaped, for fear of societal reprisal, inescapable poverty, and/or persecution. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), passed into law in 1994 and amended in '2001
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