DREAM Act Portal Forum - Spike in immigrant marriages may be a Trump bump

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NEW YORK — It was about 8 a.m. on a Monday when Matthew Sabato looked across the paint-splattered studio in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he lives with his partner, Pedro Silva, an artist.

“Put down the paintbrush,” he recalls saying, as they drank their coffee. “Let’s go to City Hall.”

For months, the couple, who met two years ago on the dating app Tinder, had been discussing their future. But after the presidential election in November, formalizing their commitment became a priority.

“He’s foreign,” Sabato said.

Silva, who is from Brazil, is in the United States on a tourist visa, which expires in early February.

“We’re afraid because Trump is going to be our president,” Sabato said.

In the weeks before and after the election of Donald Trump, whose promise to deport millions of immigrants was a central theme of his campaign, the number of couples getting marriage licenses has surged in New York City and other cities across the country.

While there are no data explaining why couples are suddenly marrying at a faster pace, many immigrants and the people who they are in relationships with say they are feeling an urgency to put a ring on before Inauguration Day.

Couples like Silva and Sabato are forgoing gushy, diamond-studded proposals in favor of frank discussions at the breakfast table. For some, a marriage certificate has become a protective shield.

“We don’t want anything to separate us,” Sabato said.

Five days after Sabato’s “unromantic,” proposal, his parents traveled from Florida to witness the couple’s ceremony at the city clerk’s office in lower Manhattan.

In November, the New York City clerk’s office issued 6,929 marriage licenses, a 23 percent increase from November 2015, and performed 4,590 ceremonies, an increase of almost 19 percent. Then through Dec. 23, the office issued 5,682 licenses, up almost 16 percent from about the same time period last year.

Michael McSweeney, the New York City clerk, said the election could certainly be a factor, but so could the relatively calm weather or low airfares, making New York a more attractive destination for out-of-towners.

“We don’t survey our visitors,” he said.

Clerks in Illinois, Michigan, Texas, Florida and California also reported a recent rise in the number of marriages.

The Cook County clerk’s office, which includes Chicago and surrounding suburbs, issued 3,115 licenses in the month after the election, a 40 percent jump from the same period last year.

In November, the Wayne County clerk in Michigan, which includes Detroit, issued 497 licenses, about an 11 percent increase from the same month in 2015, and the Los Angeles County clerk issued 3,465 licenses, a 10 percent rise. The increase was about 8 1/2 percent in Miami-Dade County, according to the clerk’s office, and Bexar County in Texas, which includes San Antonio, issued 1,135 licenses in November, an increase of just more than 6 percent.

While same-sex couples are also hurrying up their wedding plans, professionals whose businesses are tied to marriages say that many couples are prompted by fears over changes in immigration policy.

Janay McNeil, a photographer who includes the words “last-minute wedding photography” on her website, said that in recent months she had received a deluge of emails, some at 2 a.m., from couples flying to New York City to get a wedding portrait the same day.

She has met many couples, she said, in which one partner is here on a visa and they are worried about what might happen in the coming year. Getting a license has become “a necessity,” she said.

George Taxi, who sells loose rose petals, bouquets of yellow calla lilies and gold-plated rings on the sidewalk in front of the entrance to the marriage bureau in Manhattan, a few blocks north of City Hall, said his sales this November were far higher than in the same month last year.

“It could be a Trump bump,” he said.

While he talks with his customers, he said he didn’t like to be “too nosy.” But his wife, Maribel, who is Colombian and works with him on Fridays, said she had spoken to some Latino couples who recently confessed that they were getting married in response to the election.

Cheryl David, a lawyer who has focused on immigration law in New York City for about 20 years, said, “I think people are frightened of the rhetoric and they fear they’ll be picked up and deported.”

David anticipates that a new administration will pursue changes to immigration policies, though she does not envision the kind of mass deportations that some Trump critics have described.