The applicant must establish validity of his or her marriage. Under this rule, a marriage is valid for immigration purposes in cases where the marriage is valid under the law of the jurisdiction in which it is performed.
In all cases, the burden is on the applicant to establish that he or she has a valid marriage with his or her U. USCIS does not recognize the following relationships as marriages, even if valid in the place of celebration:.
Certain marriages that violate the strong public policy of the state of residence of the couple; [4]. Relationships entered into for purposes of evading immigration laws of the United States. Therefore, in cases of marriage between persons of the same sex, officers will review the laws of the jurisdiction in which the marriage took place to determine if the jurisdiction recognizes same-sex marriages and the marriage otherwise is legally valid.
Since the place-of-celebration rule governs same-sex marriages in exactly the same way that it governs opposite-sex marriages, unless the marriage is polygamous or otherwise falls within an exception to the place-of-celebration rule as discussed above, the legal validity of a same-sex marriage is determined exclusively by the law of the jurisdiction where the marriage was celebrated. If the same-sex couple now resides in a jurisdiction different from the one in which they celebrated their marriage, and that jurisdiction does not recognize same-sex marriages, the officer will look to the law of the state where the marriage was celebrated in order to determine the validity of the marriage.
USCIS accepts the validity of a marriage in cases involving transgender persons if the state or local jurisdiction in which the marriage took place recognizes the marriage as a valid marriage, subject to the exceptions described above such as polygamy. The validity of a divorce abroad depends on the interpretation of the divorce laws of the foreign country that granted the divorce and the reciprocity laws in the state of the United States where the applicant remarried.
