Let’s face it, the chance of winning a Green Card is fairly low. Only 50,000 of over 10 million people who send a Green Card application get a chance to enter the country to stay. But if we take a look at K-1 visa statistics for 2022, we’ll see that over 5,000 people from the Philippines alone go to the U.S. to get married yearly.
The total number of marriage immigrants reaches dozens of thousands of people. But how to find someone to marry for a Green Card? If you’ve made a firm decision to leave your home country and are currently looking for a potential American spouse, keep reading this guide. Our experts have some legitimately important recommendations for you.
Best mail-order bride & international dating sites
Most Popular Choice
Option #1 — Join mail-order bride sites
How to find someone to marry for citizenship? The easiest way is to join the site where all American members are looking for a foreign spouse. Such platforms are known as mail-order bride sites, but they usually accept foreign men, too, so there are no gender restrictions or other limitations. Another great news for everyone seeking marriage for immigration benefits is that for foreign members who are looking for love in the US, messaging is often free, so no investments are needed.
This is how it works:
- You join one of the reputable websites with real members from the US looking for foreign spouses and create a competitive profile.
- You chat with members until you find someone who’s serious about building a relationship with you.
- You meet this person in your country (you won’t be able to marry someone and get a Green Card without meeting your partner in real life).
- You decide to get married and you apply for a K-1 fiance(e) visa first.
Basically, you get instant access to the base of profiles created by people who are intentionally looking for foreign nationals to marry them. However, it will work for you only if you choose one of the reputable sites providing high-quality online dating services. We’ve chosen a few best platforms that may help you achieve your final goal, so take a look.
1. SofiaDate — Best for European Green Card brides and grooms
SofiaDate is one of the most reputable and popular mail-order bride platforms. It accepts both male and female users from all over the globe, so if you’re looking for a wife in the US, you’ll still be able to find a lot of potential partners. Though there are no geographical restrictions for users willing to join the community, the site is seen rather as a dating platform where Slavic members and single Americans seeking serious relationships and marriage meet.
You can sign up for the site for free and create a competitive profile without paying. Also, you can share your introductory video that will be added to a gallery, use online messenger, send audio and video messages, and even receive real gifts from American users.
2. Amourmeet — best for Latin singles seeking Green Card marriage
Amourmeet is a rather interesting platform. It definitely works for those who expect to meet marriage-minded singles from the US, but it doesn’t use the standard scheme that most other mail-order bride sites use.
You can also set up an account for free and create a great profile with multiple photos and videos to attract American singles. But the best thing is that you can also share your posts and photos as if it were Instagram, so the more active you are, the better the chance to find a partner in the near future. There’s an online messenger, Mail service, and real gift delivery, too.
3. SakuraDate — best for Asians willing to get a marriage-based Green Card
SakuraDate is currently one of the best international platforms for Asian singles seeking new relationships and expecting to get a marriage-based Green Card. No matter if you’re from Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, or China, you’ll be able to set up an account in just a few minutes and access profiles of thousands of Americans seeking serious relationships and marriage.
On this site, you can’t add a profile video, but there’s audio and video messaging, as well as photo exchange, so you’ll hardly experience any difficulty with gaining the trust of your potential partner. Just send a message, attach files proving that you are real, and enjoy communication. There’s live chat, Letter service, and multiple search features that help you find the best matches.
🎁 Bonus recommendations
If you meet a U.S. citizen on one of such websites, you won’t have to pay someone to marry for a Green Card. Moreover, a U.S. citizen is usually the one who covers most expenses. It’s a win-win for single people who wouldn’t mind finding a romantic relationship, getting legally married, and becoming a lawful permanent resident living a real family life with a local.
❗Note that the rules and immigration laws for mail-order brides are exactly the same. They use the same immigration services, must prove that their relationship is genuine, meet offline at least once, etc.
Here’s a bonus tip — save all your messages that will prove that you’ve been building a real emotional connection online and then planning your meeting offline. That will be helpful—in this case, you’ll very unlikely be accused of marriage fraud.
Option #2 — Use mainstream dating apps
If you want to marry someone for a Green Card, you may also consider using big apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, which are currently the most popular dating apps in the United States. So, the chance of finding a U.S. citizen there will be really high.
However, there are a few things that you should consider:
- Be patient. The target audience will be broad, so it will take you a lot of time to find a U.S. citizen who’d be marriage-minded, interested in foreigners, and ready to start a long-distance relationship.
- Don’t be too honest and direct. We definitely wouldn’t recommend telling members that you are looking not for a relationship but for a marriage certificate and are using the site for immigration purposes. That’s just not safe for you and even for the U.S. citizens even if they are ready to marry an immigrant for money. You may need to provide your message history, and in most cases, messages on such dating platforms can’t be deleted.
- Focus on the right people. You’ll need to sort users carefully. Don’t waste your time on people who aren’t looking for anything serious. You need to find someone who’d be interested in marriage and not just dating.
We’d also like to stress that if you meet an American citizen who gives you hints about Green Cards, mutually beneficial marriage, etc., and then asks for money in advance, block this user right away. That’s a scam in 100% of cases.
Option #3 — Get active on Instagram or Facebook
If you’re looking for someone to marry for a Green Card, you can also use Instagram and Facebook. There may be two approaches to using social media and networking sites, and you can use both at the same time.
- Use the platform as a half-dating site. Create a great profile, join groups and follow pages created for American singles, like and comment posts, add popular hashtags, and communicate. Don’t hesitate to like people who are single and who seem to be your potential matches, and communicate as much and as frequently as possible. The chance is you’ll find a U.S. citizen who’d like to marry you.
- Use the platform for research and finding the right person. If you see a marriage for immigration purposes as a business deal, you can join groups and communicate with people who are discussing related topics like marriage migration. Maybe, you’ll meet a person who’d be interested in your offer. However, you should be very careful. Use a fake profile to search for information or even your potential spouse and make sure it’s not connected with your main real account. You can connect with your future spouse using your main account later. Again, your activity online is traceable, and you don’t need anyone to think that your relationship with an American partner is not genuine just because you’ve been interested in how things with marriage visas and permanent resident status actually work.
If you’re going to use your real social media profile, you should be really looking for a partner. So, clearly set your goal, develop a strategy, and then make rational choices so that you don’t get in trouble with the law in the future.
Option #4 — Network in the US
If you’re already in the United States and want to stay but don’t have a partner who’d like to marry you to make it happen—network. Expand your social circles and discuss your problems with others, but do it with caution. Just saying something like “I want to marry to get a Green Card” may cause problems. Again, being too direct when talking about anything related to getting a lawful permanent resident status and a marriage-based green card is the worst approach.
Give hints, let others draw conclusions, and don’t take the initiative. If your situation seems interesting and promising to someone, you’ll find ways to test the waters. The chance is that you’ll find a person who’d be interested in starting a relationship with you and wouldn’t mind starting a family in the near future instead of doing it after years of dating. There are enough family-minded people in the United States, so you just need to find the one who’ll turn out to be your perfect match.
Legal or not? All about the legality of Green Card marriage for immigration purposes
If you marry a U.S. citizen for immigration purposes only, that will be a felony. So, any kind of business deal between a foreign-born spouse and an American spouse will not only be considered illegal but will also result in imprisonment and fines for both. For a U.S. citizen, the consequences may be less serious if they can prove that they didn’t know about the real intention of their foreign partner.
The only way to avoid the penalty is to have an authentic relationship and be able to prove it to USCIS. That’s why it’s recommended to save all your message history, plane tickets, photos, videos, and anything that will help you prove you have a genuine relationship with your future spouse.
Pro tip: Don’t act like you’re in a relationship — Be in a relationship
If you’re looking for an American husband for a Green Card or if you’re looking for an American wife, you should build a real emotional connection with your future spouse.
The easiest way to get a lawful permanent resident status is to find a person who’d agree to marry you and who’d actually want to be in a relationship with you. Keep in mind that getting a marriage-based Green Card isn’t a simple process.
The authenticity of your relationship with your spouse will be checked multiple times by experienced professionals who know exactly what to ask to find out if people are really close or not. Wrong answers may result not just in the rejection but in criminal prosecution and a huge fine.
If you want to avoid such a scenario, build a legitimate emotional bond with your partner. Live together for some time, and if you prefer a platonic relationship, talk about everything that would happen if it weren’t platonic. Fantasize, explore, and discover each other. Know each other’s habits, preferences, and favorite TV shows. Don’t try to pretend to be in a relationship with someone—be in a relationship with someone. In this case, your green card marriage is going to work.
