is it possible to remarry the same person without a divorce for the sake of immigration

Question

This might be a weird question, and everything I search on google just gives me a list of celebrities that have remarried.

So I’m a U.K. citizen, married to a U.S citizen, living apart in our respective countries.

He was talking with a friend who said that if we get remarried in a more liberal state, like California or Colorado, it will be easier for me to get a temporary visa to then adjust to a permanent one later down the line.

Firstly, I’d like to know if there’s any basis to that theory, is there any truth behind it being easier to get a temporary visa dependent on what state you do it through?

Secondly, is it possible to remarry the same person in these states without getting a divorce first? We got originally got married in Texas, coming up to 2 years ago.

The wording in the question makes it sound like I married for a visa, I promise you that’s not the case. I just want to explore all options in making the process easier.

Answer 1

Any jurisdiction that recognizes your marriage will not marry you again. If you can find a jurisdiction that does not recognize your marriage but that permits you to marry might marry you without your needing to get divorced first, but it seems unlikely that such an jurisdiction exists.

As far as one of you entering the UK or the US as the spouse of the other, or entering in some other way and then changing your status later, the only thing that matters is whether the national government's immigration authorities recognize the marriage. Any valid marriage performed in any US state will be recognized by both the governments of the US and the UK.

If there is some reason to think that your marriage may not be valid, then addressing the question of its validity will depend on the laws of the state in which it was performed.

Answer 2

There should be no difference between getting married in different US states, for immigration or other purposes. And you should not be getting married again in any state, because you are already married. I'm guessing that what you heard might be that it might be easier to present a marriage certificate from the US as evidence of the marriage in the US, than a marriage certificate from a foreign country, where if it's not certified you might need to get it certified, and if it's in a non-English language you would need to get it translated, which might be some hassle.

However, even if you find a state that allows you to "marry" the person you are already married to, consider the problems that this would cause. The marriage certificate from this "second" marriage would have a different date than the date of your "first" marriage, so when forms ask for your date of marriage, which are you going to put? There should be only one, legally correct, date of marriage for each marriage you have, and you cannot have another date of marriage without first terminating the previous marriage. So the "correct" date of marriage should be the first one.

But if you present the certificate from the "second" marriage (because that was the point of the "second" marriage, because for some reason you think it's easier to present that as evidence) you would have to enter the second date, and this will go down in your record. But you have probably entered the first date of marriage in other forms in other places, so now you have inconsistent dates in different places. If this is discovered at some point, they will think you committed fraud, or at the very least you would have a difficult task of explaining it, and would have to go back and correct the "incorrect" date in all the places where you have already entered it.