Charles
Boyer and Olivia de Havilland
Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
You may not think of a Probate and Family Court as a court involved
in immigration but issues concerning green cards, deportation, and citizenship arise frequently. TMC recently ran a black and
white movie, Hold Back the Dawn, that explored many of the same themes we see in court today. In the movie, Charles Boyer plays
a Romanian war refugee anxious to enter the United States. He is stuck in a small town on the Mexican side of the border along with
many other hopeful immigrants, all awaiting news of their visa status. When told that it would take 7 to 8 years for him to
obtain permission to enter the United States, Boyer is despondent. By chance, he meets a former lover played by Paulette Goddard
who suggests to him that he do what she did: marry an American and shorten the waiting period to four weeks, then get a quick divorce
once in the States. Now you see where the thread connects to Probate and Family Court.
Bear with me while I set the scene
using the same 1941 movie: Boyer decides to follow her advice, cold-heartedly stalking potential victims. He succeeds
with a naïve school teacher played by Olivia de Havilland, who is swept off her feet by the charming and intriguing foreigner. When Goddard, the former lover, senses that Boyer is actually falling in love with his new bride, she confronts de Havilland with
the truth in this classic scene:
I know what you’re thinking. ‘This woman is a tramp and she’s in love with him.’ Well, I am
a tramp and I’m in love with him. For years I’ve loved him just as you do. Only there’s this difference: I’m his sort, I’m dirt but
so is he, we belong together. You think you’re a teacher, you’re a schoolgirl who’s learned life out of a book. You’d have learned
this lesson in six weeks or six months. I’m telling it to you in six minutes. Get away, get in your car and don’t come back.
You’ll
have to watch the film to see what de Haviland decides to do with this advice.
In today’s courts it
is not uncommon for an innocent party in such a scheme to file a Complaint for Annulment by alleging the marriage was based on a fraud. If he or she can establish that the marriage was entered into by the defendant solely to attain citizenship, there are grounds for
the annulment and a good chance it will be granted.
Marriages for immigration purposes these days are frequently commercial
transactions. The immigrant pays the American to marry. One of my cases involved a man who was paid thousands to marry
a foreign woman. For years thereafter, he extorted sexual favors from her by threatening to expose the scheme.
In
fact, extortion and threats of exposure and deportation are common allegations heard in Court. Witnesses often testify that the other
party said that he/she would report them to immigration if they pursued their requests for custody, visitation, support, etc. in court.
Then there was the case of the 17-year-old who came into court accompanied by his parents. The young man needed court
permission to marry because he was not yet an adult. He swore up, down and sideways that this was his true love that he wanted
to marry. A Marriage of a Minor request is always referred to our Family Service Office for brief investigation including interviews. Family Service quickly established that he barely knew his fiancée and that the real issue was that he and his parents feared that
he would be deported when he reached age 18. The judge hearing the request, not wanting to put her blessing on fraudulent behavior,
denied the young man’s petition.
Well, a few months later the young man was back in court
again, this time before me. He claimed he really had found his one true love this time, an entirely different bride who was
much older than he and for whom he (again) expressed his undying love. In court, the prospective bride appeared to be entirely
unenthusiastic. While I was sympathetic to the young man’s plight and acknowledged his persistence, it was clear that this was
another attempt to establish a fraudulent marriage purely to gain citizenship. This was simply not something a court could authorize
and stamp with its approval. Even though I denied his request, I dearly hoped that someday his story would have a happy ending.
