Undocumented Aliens and Marriage Licenses

On April 3, 2009, the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. issued a very helpful legal analysis of civil laws regarding the issuing of marriage licenses to undocumented aliens.

The report mainly concludes that anyone in the U.S. without proper immigration documentation can’t be denied a marriage license just because of their immigration
status or only because they don’t have a Social Security number.

County clerks in many states have been refusing to issue marriage licenses to undocumented immigrants because they think that an applicant for a marriage license has to have a Social Security number. But, according to the report, this is a misunderstanding of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which was enacted in 1996. But that law dealt mainly with child support issues, not marriage and immigration issues.

As of January 2009, eight state attorneys general have issued legal opinions regarding
whether a state can deny a marriage license to an applicant who does not have a Social
Security number and in every case the attorney general found that a state cannot deny a license to applicants who do not have a Social Security number.

Here is a link to the entire report.

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