Legal child rape taking place right here in the USA.
"Major loopholes in U.S. law have allowed thousands of minors to be subjected to child marriages. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (“INA”), a U.S. child may petition for a visa for a spouse or fiancé living in another country, and a U.S. adult may petition for a visa for a minor spouse or fiancé living abroad with no age restrictions!
Over the last eleven years (FY2007 to FY2017), USCIS approved 3,595,447 petitions for spousal or fiancé entry into the United States. Of those, 8,686 involved a minor. Two minors whose petitions were approved were 13 years old; 38 were 14 years old; 269 were 15 years old; 1,768 were 16 years old, and the remaining 6,609 were 17 years old. Girls were the younger party in 95 percent of the petitions approved by USCIS.
The Committee found that USCIS awarded some petitions to people with significant age differences. For example, in 2013, USCIS approved a 71-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 17-year-old spouse in Guatemala; in 2011, USCIS approved a 14-year-old U.S. citizen’s petition for a 48-year-old spouse in Jamaica; and USCIS approved 149 petitions involving a minor with an adult spouse or fiancé who was more than 40 years old!
As part of its oversight work, the Committee staff spoke with a U.S. citizen and child-marriage victim who was forced to marry her first cousin during a family vacation to Pakistan. USCIS approved her petition for a spousal immigration benefit for her cousin when she was 13 years old after she returned to the United States. She is just one of the thousands of U.S. women and girls forced into a child marriage involving the U.S. immigration system."
These stats are from DHS and are not made up. It is also not just an immigration issue. THERE IS NO FEDERAL LAW ON CHILD MARRIAGE IN THE US!!!!!!!! There are states allowing 12-year-old girls to get married to adult men. Out of the 248,000 child brides married in the USA between 2000-2010, 77% of them were young girls married to adult men.
Only two states, New Jersey and Delaware, have laws in place that prohibit marriage under age 18, with no exceptions. 20 states have no required minimum age for marriage, while other states set different minimum legal ages for marriage for girls and for boys. Massachusetts , for example, sets the minimum age of marriage for boys at 14, while the minimum age for girls is 12.
In the U.S., 70-80 percent of all marriages involving a child end in divorce. We also know these marriages face a higher than average rate of domestic violence among other harmful long term impacts.
Child marriage is forcing girls into a situation with dire consequences that there may be too many barriers for them to escape. Sherry Johnson was 11 years old when she was forced to marry her rapist after giving birth to his child at 10. Sherry had five more children with her rapist before she divorced him at 17. In Florida, where Sherry was married, the age of marriage is 18, but if you’re pregnant or have a child, a judge in Florida can approve a marriage at any age to a man of any age. You’ve read correctly. Any age.
link to stats and other info https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Child%20Marriage%20staff%20report%201%209%202019%20EMBARGOED.pdf