I am a US citizen by birth. When I was away at school and quite lonely and young, I started dating a foreign student. My background was highly religious, and it showed that I was the type of person to think the best of all, and to commit strongly to marriage.

To make a long story short, he convinced me that he loved me and to marry him after only 3 months and then he immediately brought me into immigration for a green card for him. I was scared as the interviewer seemed to be really going after him about his status and I thougt that I did something wrong. Also, he never mentioned any urgency with his status when we were dating.

He started to show a Jeckly and Hyde personality as the marriage went along, and given my background, I was always the one to trying to make it work. He clearly intended to have a "superfical" attitude to the marriage, making it look on the outside like he was a good spouse (had a job, etc.) but at home he was verbally and psychologically abusive.

After many years I finally had the courage to seek other professional and religious opinions about him. I had also found out about lies he told that I didn't know were lies when we got married. I also learned that his family of origin secretly harbors a "do what takes to survive" mentality. His sibling had faked marriage to an American around the same time that we got married, for citizenship.

All of this pointed to the fact that he used me years ago to get his green card and subsequently, citizenship. He really didn't love me. He only wanted it to "appear" like he was being a good spouse. I would never have gone near this person had I known what I now know about warning signs of personality disorders (which were there but which I didn't even know were warning signs).

What are the options for someone who was very young and unaware of how desperate some of these foreign men are to get their green cards that they will pretend that they share your religion and values just so that you marry them, and then they don't care how they act after that? He seems to think that he has a permanent upper hand with me because he pulled off such a huge con long ago

What can the US citizen do after finding evidence of lying and fradulent intent many years after the marriage? Is there a support group for this?

I have seen this same thing many times with young male soldiers going to Korea. Next thing the new wife comes to America divorce husband and brings her whole family over. I don't know if there is any support group for this. I guess you can try a legal website that specializes in immigration laws. Good luck to you.

You do not mention if you intend to divorce. I would think in a situation like this you could have your marriage dissolved on the basis of fraud - which is a legal term for a divorce.

I don't know what is out there but I'm guessing that there is because this sort of thing is kind of common. I wish you the best of luck.

Thank you for your replies. I do want a divorce. Raising this issue with him, along with some of the lies that I've found out, gets him very angry. He seems to want to pretend these things never happened.

So in trying to document some of this... can I get a copy of the file from that immigration interview? I'd like to know his status (visa) at that time and if he was here legally. Or is there another way to find this out? The immigration agency seems like a mystery to me.