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Opening Arguments

Thomas and Lydia Take the Marriage Exam

Opening Arguments

Opening Arguments Media LLC

Atheist, Law, Politics, News, Harvard, Supremecourt, Legal, Opinion, Liberal

4.33.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2026

⏱️ 84 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this very special episode, Thomas and Lydia Smith celebrate their 11th wedding anniversary in the most normal and romantic way possible: subjecting themselves to an extended interrogation about their marriage by a federal agent. After setting the scene in a (very slightly) parallel universe in which Thomas was born in Canada and committed a series of Nickelback-related misdemeanors before overstaying his student visa, Matt draws from his twenty years of experience in sitting through hundreds of immigration interviews to play out an unscripted simulation of what his clients and their U.S. citizen spouses go through when they are applying for residency through marriage.

We then reconvene to review how the Smiths did, and Matt takes us through some of the legal issues raised in this interview as well as some of the more interesting aspects of the residency process generally. 

Finally, we discuss some of the weirder aspects of the law surrounding immigration through marriage beyond the facts of this interview, including (among many others):

--Do you really have to prove to the satisfaction of an immigration officer that your marriage includes sex?

--Why might the US government refuse to recognize a prior divorce from your home country? 

--Will federal immigration authorities really recognize a Zoom wedding conducted from completely different continents?

--Can you bring multiple partners if you are coming from a country where polygamy is legal?

  1. “Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (1/20/2025 edition)

  2. “Immigration Consequences of Criminal Activity,” Congressional Research Service (5/28/21)

  3. Matter of Peterson, 12 I&N Dec. 663 (BIA 1968)

  4. Kicking the INA Out of Bed: Abolishing the Consummation Requirement for Proxy Marriages,” 22 Hastings J. Gender & L. 55 (2011)

  5. “Second Wives Club: Mapping the Impact of Polygamy in U.S. Immigration Law,” Claire A. Smearman, Berkeley Journal of Immigration Law (Dec. 2009)

 

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:30.8

Hello and welcome to opening arguments. I'm Thomas Smith and folks, I've got a treat for you.

0:40.0

Instead of the usual rapid response Friday, we're doing something extra special. It's a crossover event with Gavile Gaville.

0:47.4

And I know there was some really terrible Supreme Court news. Rather than be among the many law shows doing that horrible bad news,

0:55.3

we're doing something fun today. But we will get to the bad news later. That'll be next week.

0:59.5

It was mine and Lydia's anniversary the other day. And Matt had an idea, why don't we do a

1:05.3

pretend immigration interview that married couples do? It's the interview that tests whether or not you're really married.

1:12.7

It's that actual one. So Matt is going to play immigration agent and also our lawyer at the same time.

1:18.4

It's a double performance. It's a really good one. It's not since Michael B Jordan and Michael A Jordan has there been such a good performance.

1:25.8

This was so much friggin' fun. But it was also very long.

1:29.8

So the interviews part is the more goofy fun part that's more gavel-gavel. I'm going to leave those on gavel-gaville, check them out if you want.

1:38.1

But what I've got for you folks today is once we switch over to the sort of the debrief and Matt telling us about the law and how it works and all this different interesting and funny stuff and, you know, kind of dark stuff at times. It's immigration law. It's going to be crappy like it just is going to be. But we have a ton of fun with it. Once we started talking about the law, that's what I'm giving you folks today. And it's a long chunk. There's a reason. otherwise I'd be given you almost a three hour thing. So if you want to hear the interviews part, there's going to be jokes you probably won't get if you don't, but that's okay. If you really want to hear the interview part, and that's Matt separates us. It's interrogation tactics. You know, first he interviews Lydia and then he interviews me because I'm the Canadian immigrant in our

2:17.8

scenario. And then he interviews us together for a little bit. If you'd like to hear that, go to gavel-gavle. Go to the feed. Those two episodes are out. But if you aren't into that and you don't want to hear a bunch of personal details slash acting of us doing, it is a lot of fun. But if you're just here for the, here for the law, just the facts,

2:34.8

then that's mostly this episode, because this is kind of once we're out of character and we're debriefing and we're talking about it. Either way, whether you check out the interview part on gavel-gavel or not, I think it'll still be a ton of fun. We learned so much. And it was such a good idea from Matt. A really, really good idea. I just enjoyed this tremendously. I think you will, too.

2:52.8

Other news, if you are And it was such a good idea from Matt. A really, really good idea. I just enjoyed this tremendously.

2:52.1

I think you will, too.

2:53.0

Other news, if you are as infuriated as I am about people spreading conspiracy theories

2:58.5

about Trump assassination attempts, I've got a serious inquiries only.

3:01.6

I have two intense episodes about that because I can't stand that.

...

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