"Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved over the past decade... In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl."

"The approvals are legal: The Immigration and Nationality Act does not set minimum age requirements. And in weighing petitions for spouses or fiancees, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services goes by whether the marriage is legal in the home country and then whether the marriage would be legal in the state where the petitioner lives.... Some victims of forced marriage say the lure of a U.S. passport combined with lax U.S. marriage laws are partly fueling the petitions. 'My passport ruined my life,' said Naila Amin, a dual citizen from Pakistan who grew up in New York City. She was forcibly married at 13 in Pakistan and applied for papers for her 26-year-old husband to come to the country. 'People die to come to America,' she said. 'I was a passport to him. They all wanted him here, and that was the way to do it.'"

Time Magazine reports.

ADDED: I assume the reason the age of marriage is so low in some states is because there are American residents who get pregnant, and marriage is a traditional option for dealing with this predicament. But these low-marriage-age laws should not be adopted as the age for bringing someone in from another country to unite with someone who's already here. That kind of marriage doesn't deal with the after effects of sex. It exposes more young girls to sexual activity!