FAIR<\/a> noted that forced marriage was a growing problem among immigrant groups in America. At the time, Syrian refugee communities had a particularly high incidence of child brides.<\/p>\nMarvels of cultural diversity notwithstanding, the United States has laws governing when individuals are \u201cof age\u201d for matrimony. The threshold is predicated on one\u2019s ability to make mature decisions and to give informed consent.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, and unbelievably, the U.S. the Immigration and Nationality Act sets no minimum age requirement. In weighing petitions for spouses or fianc\u00e9es, USCIS considers when marriages are legal in the home countries, where brides can be 13, 12 or even younger. The agency said it rejected just 2.6 percent of spousal or fianc\u00e9e claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt indicates a loophole that we need to close,\u201d said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.<\/p>\n
Indeed. Immigration policies that permit the importation of underage brides makes a disgusting farce of American ideals and mocks this nation\u2019s commitment to safeguarding inalienable human rights.<\/p>\n
Are you with us, #MeToo?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Where\u2019s the #MeToo crowd when girls need them? Over the past decade, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) waved thousands of children into the country to be brides of older men, many of them resident aliens. \u201cIn almost all of these cases this involves cultures where young girls are often the subject of arranged<\/p>\n
Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":15582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[1524,93,4258,4257],"yst_prominent_words":[4250,4249,4252,4246,4256,3006,4254,4251,1963,4247,4145,4245,4255,4253,4248,4244,1945,1939,1947],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20579"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20581,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20579\/revisions\/20581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20579"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}