The requests came from a wide variety of countries
Thousands of requests by men to bring in child and adolescent brides to live in the United States were approved by the government over the past decade.
In one case, a 49-year-old man applied for admission for a 15-year-old girl, according to government data obtained by the Associated Press.
The are no set minimum age requirements under the Immigration and Nationality Act and as for spouse and fiancees petitions, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) determines their application decisions based on whether the marriage in question is legal in the country of origin, and if it would be legal in the state where the petition resides.
Many states have different laws on the minimum age a person can get married.
There were more than 5,000 cases of adults petitioning on behalf of minors and nearly 3,000 examples of minors seeking to bring in older spouses or fiancés.
In almost all of these cases, the female was the younger person in the relationship. In 149 cases, the adults were older than 40, and in 28 cases, they were over 50, the committee discovered.
In a statement, officials with the USCIS did not expand on the State Department's process, however, they did indicate that roughly 2.6 per cent of claims are rejected.
