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New Hampshire
legislators pass bill to ban child
marriage. Changing US immigration
laws should be next, expert says   

A marriage certificate form with two gold rings stacked on top of it.
“Our immigration laws encourage child marriage,” says Hayat Bearat, visiting associate professor at Northeastern’s School of Law. Getty Images

If New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu signs a bill raising the minimum age of marriage to 18, the Granite State will join 12 other states that already ban child marriage.

A Northeastern University legal and domestic violence expert praised the move, but says there’s little likelihood of national legislation any time soon. In the meantime, she says the focus should be on changing U.S. immigration laws that promote child marriage.

The way it is now, “our immigration laws encourage child marriage,” says Hayat Bearat, visiting associate professor at Northeastern’s School of Law and director of the Domestic Violence Institute.

For starters, Bearat would like to see changes at the federal level that impose age restrictions on children immigrating to the United States to marry their sponsors, as well as U.S. children sponsoring spouses from overseas.

“There needs to be reform in our immigration laws to have the minimum age (of spousal visas) be 18 unless there’s an exception for extreme humanitarian reasons,” such as when a child’s life is in danger in their home country,  Bearat says.

From 2007 to 2017, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services reviewed more than 5,500 petitions by adults bringing a child spouse or fiance to the U.S., in addition to nearly 3,000 petitions that involved a child bringing over an adult spouse or fiance, Bearat says in her law journal article, “Caged by a Marriage.”

The immigration service “awarded some petitions where significant age differences existed,” Bearat writes. “Some examples include a 71-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 17-year-old spouse, a 14-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse, and 149 petitions in which a child was engaged or married to someone over the age of 40.”

Child marriage can be “utilized as a weapon in immigrant communities,” especially when a young spouse from overseas doesn’t know they have rights in the U.S. that did not exist in their home country, Bearat says.

She says child marriage is associated with with increased domestic violence, mental health issues, poverty and limited educational opportunities.

Legal experts say there is currently little chance of Congress passing national legislation to raise the age of marriage the way it raised the legal age of alcohol use to 21 in 1984.

Instead, advocacy groups such as Unchained At Last have focused on getting states to change their laws, Bearat says.

Despite a growing national momentum against underage marriage, state laws make it legal for people under 18 to get married in most U.S. states, especially if their union is approved by their parents or the courts.

Marrying before the age of 18 was legal in all 50 states until 2017. Now, 12 states — 13 if the New Hampshire bill gets gubernatorial approval — mandate married people reach the age of majority regardless of parental consent.

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