Hi, I have a very close friend from Ecuador who is illegally on the US since he came to study and eventually got caught up in depression and overstayed. He now did a full 180° and fixed his life, lost 150 lbs, got a job, moved to the city and is doing ok for himself for the first time. He works very hard and is a great person all around.

But his parents were just made aware of his status as illegal and are now very scared that his status would be trouble for when they want visas or whatnot and implications on their family who also lives in the US, so they want to pay someone 50k to marry him and get a green card eventually so everything is fixed. Making him leave his job to move to New York with this random girl and pretend obviously they're together for some years.

But he wants to stay and ideally not do that, since his life was really starting to look better and eventually in the future he could find someone by himself and fix it, but his parents are giving him until the end of the month to accept, and unless he has a very good reason why not, they won't accept it. Also he wouldn't want to block them or stop talking to them since he really loves them and that would break him even more.

We know there aren't many alternatives and what they are proposing is very risky, but is there any other option here? What are your thoughts?

Thank you