8 U.S.C. § 1375a — Domestic violence information and resources for immigrants and regulation of international marriage brokers

(a) Information for K nonimmigrants. The Secretary of Homeland Security, consulting the Attorney General and Secretary of State and organizations with relevant expertise, must create and distribute a pamphlet about immigrant victims’ legal rights and resources. (1) The pamphlet must cover the K visa and marriage-based immigration processes, including conditional residence and adjustment of status; the illegality and dynamics of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse; domestic-violence and sexual-assault services and the two national hotlines; immigrant victims’ rights in immigration, criminal-justice, family-law, and other matters, including protection orders; parents’ child-support duties; marriage fraud and its penalties; the possibility that a citizen with a history of violence or other crimes may use a K visa, even without a criminal record; and the requirement that marriage brokers give foreign clients specified background information, while warning that information may be incomplete or inaccurate. (2) The pamphlet must contain all of that information. (3) Homeland Security, consulting the Attorney General and Secretary of State, must prepare summaries for Federal officials to use in interviews under subsection (b). (4) The Secretary of State must translate the pamphlet into relevant foreign languages, including Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Chinese, Ukrainian, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, French, Arabic, Portuguese, and Hindi. Every 2 years, Homeland Security, consulting the other two Secretaries, must select at least 14 languages based on applicant concentrations. (5) The Secretary of State must mail the pamphlet to each K applicant with the visa instructions, in the applicant’s primary language when available, or English. Homeland Security must include the petition and any criminal-background information it has about the petitioner. State must share government-record information with the beneficiary, explain that it may be incomplete, and disclose it in the applicant’s primary language at the interview. Homeland Security must search the National Crime Information Center Protection Order Database for each petitioner. Relevant results must accompany the background information and may not be used or disclosed for another purpose unless law authorizes it. Homeland Security must also provide a cover sheet identifying whether the petitioner disclosed protection-order, restraining-order, or criminal-history information; the information found during adjudication; and whether the petitioner’s disclosures about earlier petitions match the Department’s multiple-visa database. (6) The pamphlet must be distributed and available, including in the required languages, within 120 days after January 5, 2006. (7) The pamphlet must be available to the public at every consular post, with its summaries available to foreign-service officers; posted on State and Homeland Security websites and the websites of relevant consular posts; and available to marriage brokers, government agencies, and nongovernmental advocacy organizations. (b) Interviews. (1) At a K visa interview, a consular officer must give the applicant, in the primary language, information about protection orders and criminal convictions collected under (a)(5)(A)(iii), provide the pamphlet and an oral summary, and ask whether a marriage broker helped create the relationship. If so, the officer must obtain the broker’s identity and confirm that the broker gave the required information and materials. (2) At every consular or adjustment interview for a family-based petition, the pamphlet must be given directly to the applicant. The interviewing State or Homeland Security officer must review its summary orally in the applicant’s primary language and provide the pamphlet in English or another appropriate language. (c) Confidentiality. State and Homeland Security officials may not disclose to a nonimmigrant applicant the name or contact information of a person who obtained a protection or restraining order against the petitioner or was a victim of the petitioner’s violent crime. They must disclose that person’s relationship to the petitioner. (d) Marriage brokers. (1) A broker may not give anyone personal contact information, a photograph, or general background or-interest information about a person under 18. To comply, it must obtain a government birth certificate or other age proof for each foreign client, mark when it received the document, keep the original for 7 years, and produce it on request to an enforcing authority. (2) Before sharing a foreign client’s information, a broker must search the National Sex Offender Public Website and collect the United States client’s background information. That information must be a signed certification, with documents or an attestation, covering protection or restraining orders; Federal, State, or local arrests or convictions for the listed violent, sexual, exploitation, trafficking, restraint, kidnapping, and related crimes or attempts; arrests or convictions involving prostitution or its proceeds; arrests or convictions involving controlled substances or alcohol; marital history, including current and prior marriages, how and when they ended, and prior sponsorship of an engaged or married alien; the ages of children under 18; and every State and country where the client lived since age 18. (3) A broker may not give a United States client or representative a foreign client’s personal contact information until it has searched the sex-offender website, collected the information above, given the foreign client in the primary language the search results or confirmation of no result, the signed certification and supporting material, and the pamphlet, and received the foreign client’s signed written consent in that language to release the information to that specific client. The broker may disclose a victim’s relationship to the United States client, but not the victim’s name or location. (4) A broker may give a foreign client’s personal contact information only to a United States client, not to potential clients, recruited clients, or representatives. (5) A broker that violates or attempts to violate (1) through (4) faces a civil penalty of $5,000 to $25,000 per violation, imposed by a Federal judge or, at the Attorney General’s discretion, after notice and an agency hearing under the Administrative Procedure Act. In interstate or foreign commerce or the United States’ special maritime and territorial jurisdiction, a broker that violates or attempts to violate those paragraphs may be fined under title 18, imprisoned up to 1 year, or both; a knowing violation carries up to 5 years. A person who knowingly misuses information collected under (2) or (3), other than for required disclosures, may be fined or imprisoned up to 1 year. A person who knowingly makes fraudulent representations, or fails to make required disclosures, to defraud someone outside the United States into a dating or matrimonial relationship may likewise be fined or imprisoned up to 1 year. These penalties add to other Federal or State liability. Nothing prevents disclosure to law enforcement or under a court order. Other legal penalties and equitable remedies also remain available. (6) The Attorney General enforces this section and consults the Director of the Office on Violence Against Women about enforcement policy and public education. (7) This subsection does not preempt State laws giving additional protection or any other right or remedy. (8) This subsection generally took effect 60 days after January 5, 2006; the pamphlet-distribution requirement took effect 30 days after the pamphlet’s development and initial distribution. (e) Definitions. “Crime of violence” has the meaning in 18 U.S.C. § 16. “Domestic violence” has the meaning in section 3 of the cited Act. “Foreign national client” means a noncitizen or non-nation who is not a lawful permanent resident and uses a marriage broker, including an alien in the United States through that service and anyone recruited by the broker or its representative. “International marriage broker” means a fee-charging person or entity that provides dating, matrimonial, matchmaking, or social-referral services between United States citizens, nationals, or lawful permanent residents and foreign clients by sharing contact information or facilitating communication. It excludes qualifying nonprofit cultural or religious matchmaking groups and businesses whose principal business is not international dating, which charge comparable rates and offer comparable services regardless of gender or citizenship. “K nonimmigrant visa” means a visa under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(K)(i) or (ii). “Personal contact information” means information or a forum that lets people contact one another, including a name or home, postal, email, or instant-message address; a telephone, pager, cellphone, fax, or voice-mail number; or an opportunity to meet in person. It does not include a photograph or general background or-interest information. “Representative” means a person or entity acting for a broker, including a recruiter, agent, contractor, another broker, or another person conveying information, whether paid or not. “State” includes the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands. “United States,” geographically, includes all the States. “United States client” means a United States citizen or a person residing in the United States who uses a broker’s services for payment or incurred debt. (f) GAO studies. (1) The Comptroller General must study the effect of this section and section 832 on the K visa process, including yearly petition numbers; denials; waiver applications, results, and reasons; cases with convictions in the required background information; waivers in those cases; repeat and concurrent fiancé(e), spouse, and family-based petitions; and yearly and cumulative tracking in the multiple-filings database. The study must also examine the number of brokers and resulting marriages, compliance, the accuracy and completeness of information collected by brokers and agencies, use of the visa process or broker services by people with violence histories, their accuracy in reporting, and the accuracy and completeness of Homeland Security’s background checks. (2) Within 2 years after January 5, 2006, the Comptroller General must report the results to the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. (3) Homeland Security and State must collect and keep the data needed for that study. (4) The Comptroller General must conduct a continuing-impact study covering the same subjects for this section and section 1184 of this title. Within 2 years after March 7, 2013, the Comptroller General must report to those committees. The Attorney General and the Secretaries of Homeland Security and State must collect and keep the needed data.