They met in a McDonald`s.
Barbara Dumas was 20 and cleaned tables there, because it was tough for a young black woman to get any other job. Nadirshah Nooruddin was 22 and a Pakistani cabdriver who often stopped there to eat.
They dated for six months and were married in City Hall on Nov. 5, 1983. Her mother had warned her about aliens who married U.S. women to qualify for permanent residency and then abandoned them. But Barbara didn`t listen, and one month after the wedding, she filed with U.S. officials to get her husband a coveted green card.
”I really trusted him,” she said. ”He had never mentioned it before we got married. But when he asked me if I would do it, he said it would be for love.”
Nadirshah Nooruddin filed for divorce last month from Barbara Dumas Nooruddin.
Nadirshah says that the marriage ended because of ”personal problems.”
But government officials believe it was a case of marriage fraud.
”There`s no doubt in my mind what he was doing,” said Edward Mallon, a supervisory special agent in Chicago for the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service. ”He was marrying a United States citizen so he could obtain lawful residence here.”
Immigration officials here say they get 5 to 10 calls a week from women who were dumped after they helped their husbands get the green card that guarantees they can stay in the country.
It is hardly a problem limited to Chicago. Thousands of cases are reported every year in the U.S., and officials figure they hear of only a small percentage of the fraudulent marriages.
In Washington, D.C., a 32-year-old woman told how her husband walked out after just 3 1/2 months.
She had exchanged wedding vows last Jan. 31 with a debonair, 38-year-old Yugoslav alien who had charmed her with his courtly Old World manners and the polish of a doctorate in international affairs.
Three and a half months later, he left her with a host of unpaid bills and an apartment she couldn`t afford on a secretary`s salary.
”How could I have been such a fool?” she asked across the table of a Georgetown bar. ”When we were dating, it was all champagne and caviar. He told me ours was a match made in heaven.
”But after we were married he told me to get lost. Marrying me had been just a way to get around the immigration laws to stay in this country.”
He had not departed, however, until after she had petitioned INS to grant him permanent resident alien status.
”I`ve dealt with so many of these cases that I regard them as emotional rape,” said Neville Cramer, a supervisory special agent in the INS Washington district office.
”These guys play with the hearts and minds of their victims. They tell them they love them while knowing they intend to dupe them into marriage in order to win permanent residency. Eventually, they tell them it was all a ruse, just a game to get what they wanted.”
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Under federal law, an alien can stay in the U.S. indefinitely if he remains married for two years after receiving permanent residency. However, INS is empowered to seek revocation of that status if the couple is divorced before that period under the legal presumption that the marriage was fraudulent, said Richard E. Norton, deputy assistant INS commissioner for investigations.
Courts have failed to uphold the two-year provision, however, and required the INS to prove the alien had fraudulent intent at the time of the marriage, he explained.
”Further, the courts have said that INS cannot make a judgment on what constitutes a marriage under accepted American culture. We may think that means sharing the same bed and the same financial obligations. But the courts have said that such elements are not specified in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
”So there is little we can do if the partner who was duped into the marriage won`t cooperate with the government and the alien claims they have adopted an alternate lifestyle that doesn`t include living together.”
Legislation to fight what has been dubbed ”marriage fraud” is being considered by members of the Immigration Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The subcommittee is considering legislation to crack down on professionals who pay U.S. citizens to marry aliens with the intention of seeking an amicable divorce after permanent residency is obtained, said U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.,) a subcommittee member.
That kind of ”marriage ring” led to the convictions of eight people in Chicago last April for arranging hundreds of fraudulent marriages.
But coming up with an effective deterrent that doesn`t violate personal rights may be difficult, Simon said.
”This kind of abuse has to stop. But a marriage is a kind of personal thing to judge,” said Simon. ”Do we say the marriage has to last a certain amount of time? You run into problems with that.”
The difficulty of proving the motive in a marriage may make it difficult to assist the victims of marriage fraud.
Barbara Dumas Nooruddin said, ”I asked him, `When you get your papers, are you going to leave me?` And he said, `No, why would I do that?`
”He always told me to save my money, because we would have a future together. I gave my whole paycheck to him and he wouldn`t let me buy anything. He always said, `When I get a better job, I`ll buy those things for you.` ”
Nooruddin denies he married Barbara to gain permanent residency. ”I didn`t marry her just for the green card. I would have married her anyway. It was a personal problem” that led to their divorce, he said.
But according to Barbara Nooruddin, her husband carefully planned the steps to get his green card and to leave her.
He told her in December, 1984, that he had to return to Pakistan to be interviewed by the government. According to immigration officials, he actually had to leave the U.S. and return through a petition filed by his wife because he had originally entered illegally.
Barbara Nooruddin says he never told her about that requirement. He also never told her that he had been granted permanent residency when he returned to the U.S later in December, she said.
Six months later, ”he started acting crazy,” she said. ”He told me he had gone to a hotel with two women. He started fights and said he was going to leave me.”
In June, Nooruddin told his wife he was going to New York and would send for her when he found a job, she said. He sold their bed and much of their furnishings, and she moved in with a girlfriend. He called her frequently, said his money had been stolen, that he hadn`t found a job, but asked her to wait for him, she said.
A month after he left, Barbara Nooruddin learned from friends that he was in Chicago and may never have gone to New York. On Aug. 15, she was served with divorce papers.
”I guess I was young and dumb,” she said. ”He knew he was marrying me for the green card. I feel like he wasted two years of my life.”
Barbara Nooruddin now lives in a sparsely furnished North Side apartment, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. She hasn`t been able to hire a lawyer to fight the divorce, because the $250 a week she takes home from McDonald`s doesn`t leave any extra money at the end of the month.
But she does think that some good has come out of the marriage and pending divorce. It has taught her friend Gerlean Kabir a lesson.
Kabir works at the same McDonald`s, lives in the same apartment building, and in June, 1984, she married a citizen of Bangladesh.
”One month after we got married, he asked me to do the same thing,”
Kabir said. ”But I know how they operate. He`s not going to get a green card out of me.”