Mail-order bride

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mail-order bride is a label applied to a woman who lists herself in a catalog or with a marriage agency that publishes her intent to marry someone who lives far away. Although the label is widely used, it has derogatory connotations and may be offensive.

Mail-order brides hail from dozens of developing countries and a few from economically blighted developed ones. Ukraine, Russia, Colombia and the Philippines have particularly large numbers of mail-order brides. Men who list themselves in such publications may be referred to as mail-order husbands. This term is less common and generally implies a man who seeks a mail-order bride. A small percentage of mail-order husbands have, however, intentions similar to mail-order brides, i.e. to marry and move to a more favorable environment.

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[edit] Marriage success statistics

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reports that "...marriages arranged through these services would appear to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole, fully 80 percent of these marriages having lasted over the years for which reports are available." [1] The USCIS also reports that "... mail-order bride and e-mail correspondence services result in 4,000 to 6,000 marriages between U.S. men and foreign brides each year."

[edit] Immigration issues by country

[edit] Canada

Canadian immigration laws have traditionally been similar to but slightly less restrictive than their US counterparts; for instance, Canadian law does not require the Canadian citizen to prove minimum income requirements such as in the United States.

Until recently Canada's immigration policy regarding mail-order brides used the "family class" to refer to spouses and dependents and "fiancé(e)" for those intending to marry, with only limited recognition of opposite-sex "common law" relationships; same-sex partners were processed as independent immigrants or under a discretionary provision for "humane and compassionate" considerations.

In 2002, the Canada immigration law was completely revised. One of the major changes was conjugal partner sponsorship, which is available between any two people (including same sex couples) that have had conjugal relations together for at least one year. However Canadian immigration authorities frown upon conjugal partner sponsorship in the case of heterosexual couples and now require the couples to marry before a visa is granted unless some serious reason can demonstrate why the couple is not married.

[edit] Taiwan

In Taiwan, mail-order brides come primarily from Mainland China and Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.

Brides who come from Mainland China are known colloquially as dalu mei (大陸妹, pinyin: dàlù mèi, literally: little sisters from the mainland). The marriages and immigration are arranged by licensed marriage brokers. Spousal immigration is the only legal form of immigration from Mainland China to Taiwan. Although from Mainland China, dalu mei are not normally considered members of the Mainlander minority on Taiwan. There are also mail-order grooms from Mainland China who immigrate to Taiwan, although this is much less common. Pro-Taiwan independence parties such as the Taiwan Solidarity Union have expressed concerns that brides from Mainland China and their children will adversely influence Taiwan’s political landscape as they acquire citizenship. However, these attitudes are not universal even among pro-independence supporters, and President Chen Shuibian of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party made a particular point of welcoming these brides at his campaign activities in 2004. Also, there was a poll that suggested that Mainland Chinese brides tend to vote for the same political party that their husbands vote.

Many commentators have pointed out that the immigration of foreign brides from Mainland China and Southeast Asia is already changing the ethnic composition of Taiwan, in that mail-order brides and their children already outnumber Taiwanese aborigines. Some now consider foreign brides to be Taiwan’s fledging fifth ethnic group and are interested in observing how Taiwan’s demographics will gradually change by this group. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of Vietnamese stores and restaurants in Taiwan that are operated by Vietnamese brides. Taiwan's Ministry of the Interior has also published domestic violence-prevention materials in Indonesian, Vietnamese, and Thai, as well as a general guide to life in Taiwan in Khmer.[1]

[edit] United States

The United States issues a K-1 "fiancée" visa that can be used within six months of issue and is valid for a 90-day entry into the U.S. The K-1 (and K-2 for accompanying minor children) is classified as a "non-immigrant" visa, though all the immigrant visa checks (i.e., FBI check and medical exam) are required for this visa. While this visa is issued as a single entry visa, should the intending spouse return to her country within the 90 days and seek to return again to the U.S. for the purpose of marriage the Embassy may issue a second visa document. The USCIS reports that approximately 17,263 such visas were issued in fiscal 2001, about 7988 coming from Asia and about 4714 coming from Europe (including all of the former Soviet Union states). It should be noted though, that the K-1 visa is used by Americans who met partners overseas, and perhaps most commonly, by recent immigrants to the US. "Mail-order" style engagements account for a tiny fraction of all K-1 visas. This type of visa application specifies the applicant's fiancé. If the visa holder does not marry the specified fiancé within the validity of the visa, she is required to return to her country of origin. However, if she marries her fiancé, she and her husband can apply to obtain "green card" permanent resident status with her husband (and possible co-sponsors) promising to support her for ten years or until she obtains citizenship. This residence status is conditional for a period of two years, after which the couple is expected to apply to have the condition removed. Removal requires the couple prove that they are married to each other in good faith. If the couples have divorced, the immigrant can apply for a waiver to remove the condition. In all cases supporting evidence is reviewed by the USCIS, often consisting of wedding and vacation photos, love letters, birth certificates of children, and evidence of mutual financial trust such as joint bank account statements, leases signed by both spouses, bills, insurance policies and other documentation demonstrating a genuine marital relationship. If evidence is found to be suspect further investigation by the USCIS may be required. This process is intended to prevent would-be immigrants from abandoning their sponsors immediately after obtaining residency and fraudulent marriages solely for the purpose of immigration. There are exceptions. For example, a woman who is determined to have been a battered wife can self-petition under VAWA provisions. Exemptions are also granted if a woman shows that the marriage was bona fide and her spouse died. Additional information on this topic can be found at Immigration Letter Weekly.

The parties can also marry before the fiancée enters the United States in which case the spouse must retain her residence outside the United States and her U.S. citizen spouse (or permanent resident alien) can apply for a permanent residence visa for her, in which case the visa is processed at the consulate and she is issued a "green card" valid from her date of entry into the United States, though she may also be subject to the two year condition as stated above if the date of entry is less than two years after her marriage date. A K-3 non-immigrant visa can be issued to the overseas spouse to reunite her with her husband while the permanent residency visa (green card) is being processed. The average wait for a K-3 visa (6 months to 1 year), is usually a little longer than the wait for a K-1 visa. (3 to 6 months.)

[edit] Comparison with other matchmaking forms

[edit] Classified and online matchmaking services

Main article: online dating service

Classified listings were a common matchmaking practice for many years. With the advent of the internet, online matchmaking websites have proliferated and largely replaced traditional paper-based classifieds. Thus, online matchmaking is only an updated form of the American mail-order bride tradition, with the sole difference being the method used for broadcasting the personal ad.

[edit] Arranged marriage

Main article: arranged marriage

An arranged marriage is one in which the marital partners are chosen by others, usually parents, based on considerations other than the pre-existing mutual attraction of the partners.

[edit] Casual contact

Casual contact is the most common means of beginning a relationship, and this includes relationships between persons born in different countries. Persons who enter the United States on immigrant, student, tourist and temporary employment visas, or those who enter the country unlawfully, are most likely to meet as a result of work, socializing, and mutual or family friends.

[edit] Legal issues

Marriage agencies and mail-order bride publications are legal in almost all countries. Certain notable legal issues are:

[edit] Philippines

  • The Philippines prohibits the business of organizing or facilitating marriages between Filipinas and foreign men. The Philippine congress enacted Republic Act 6955 or the Anti-Mail-Order Bride Law in 1990 as a result of stories that appeared in the local press and media about Filipinas being abused by their foreign husbands. Because of this, Filipinas often use "reverse publications"--publications in which men advertise themselves--to contact foreign men for marriage on behalf of the Filipina women.


[edit] Belarus

  • In 2005, President Alexander Lukashenko attempted to regulate "marriage agencies" in Belarus and make it difficult for them to operate. He believed that western men were draining his country of all the women of child-bearing age[2]. However, as most agencies are being run from outside Belarus (either in Russia, European countries or in the United States), his regime has been unable to stop or otherwise regulate this activity.

[edit] United States

  • On January 6, 2006, President George W. Bush signed the "International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005" (IMBRA) as part of the H.R. 3402: Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 [3]. The requirements of the law are controversial, and some commentators have claimed that it presumes that American men are abusers [4].

The law stipulates that, notwithstanding permission already granted by a foreign woman to give out her contact information to anyone deemed fit, before a foreign woman's address may be sold to a US citizen or resident:

  1. The man must complete a questionnaire on his criminal and marital background.
  2. The seller must obtain the man's record from the National Sex Offenders Public Registry database [5].
  3. The questionnaire and record must be translated to the woman's native language and provided to her.
  4. The woman must certify for each specific individual, that she agrees to permit communication.

Plaintiffs in two federal lawsuits (European Connections & Tours v. Gonzales, N.D. Geo. 2006; AODA v. Gonzales, S.D. Ohio 2006) have taken issue with this last clause, because they claim that this is the government actively interfering between two people in terms of what they call "the right to say hello." While the US Attorney General and the Tahirih Justice Center claim in legal briefs that this interference is "not a burden," opponents claim that a substantial number of foreign women do not have email addresses and/or access to computers, and would thus be unable to approve or disapprove of any specific contact permission forms. Opponents of IMBRA claim that the government thus effectively bars communication between American men and these women.

  • In enacting IMBRA, the Congress of the United States was responding to claims by the Tahirih Justice Center (TJC), a woman's advocacy group, that mail order brides were vulnerable to domestic abuse because they are unfamilliar with the laws, language and customs of their new home. The TJC insisted that special legislation was needed to protect them. [6] The TJC asked the United States Congress to consider several notable cases mentioned in the Congressional Record. Critics of IMBRA claim that the TJC failed to ask Congress to consider the relative amount of abuse between mail order bride couples and regular couples, including the thousands of spousal murders that occurred inside the USA over the past 15 years.

Three widely noted mail order bride murder cases are: [7]

  1. In September 2003, 26-year-old Ukrainian engineer and mail-order bride Alla Barney bled to death on the floor of her car after her American husband Lester Barney, 58, slashed her throat in front of the couple’s four-year-old son, Daniel. Barney fled with Daniel from the scene in the parking lot of the boy’s daycare center, but after an Amber Alert was triggered, he turned Daniel over to a friend and was himself taken into custody by police. Alla had been granted a restraining order against Barney a few months before and had been given temporary custody of Daniel. [8] [9]
  2. Susanna Blackwell met her husband through an International Marriage Broker called ‘‘Asian Encounters’’ and left the Philippines to settle with him in Washington state in 1994. The husband, Timothy Blackwell, physically abused Susanna, including one incident in which he choked her the day after their wedding. Susanna reported the abuse to the police and obtained a protection order against him. While awaiting divorce/annulment proceedings in a Seattle courtroom many months later, the pregnant (by another man) Susanna and two of her friends were shot to death. Blackwell was convicted of murdering all three women.
  3. Anastasia King, a young woman from Kyrgyzstan, was found strangled to death and buried in a shallow grave in Washington State in December 2000. At the age of 18, Anastasia had received an email from a 38-year-old Seattle man, Indle King, from a "mail order bride website". He flew to her country and they were married soon after. Two years later, after considerable strife, Indle wanted another bride. He was allegedly unwilling to pay for a divorce so King ordered a tenant in their Washington home to kill Anastasia. Weighing nearly 300 pounds, King pinned Anastasia down while the tenant strangled her with a necktie. Both were convicted of murder. King’s previous wife, whom he had also met through an IMB, had a domestic violence protection order issued against him and left him because he was abusive. [10] [11]
  • On November 18, 2004, a federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland awarded Ukrainian mail order bride Nataliya Fox $433,500 ($341,000 of which were punitive damages) against international marriage broker Encounters International and its Russian immigrant owner, Natasha Spivack. Spivack arranged Nataliya's marriage to an American man with a history of violently abusing women and who, after being matched with Nataliya, abused her over the course of their marriage. The jury unanimously found the marriage broker guilty of fraud, unfair and deceptive trade practices, willful and wanton negligence, unauthorized appropriation of Ms. Fox's name and likeness, and defamation. The jury found the mail order bride company (Natasha Spivak) liable for failing to tell Nataliya about a federal law that allows foreign nationals to escape abusive marriages without fear of automatic deportation, and for actively misleading her about her legal options. The jury also found EI (Natasha Spivak) liable for misrepresenting that it screened male clients when it did not; and publicizing Nataliya’s marriage to Mr. Fox as an EI “success” story, without her permission, even after she fled to a domestic violence shelter. [12][13] [14] On April 14, 2006 a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the jury's verdict in full, noting that Spivack's conduct involved "moral turpitude." [15] [16]
  • On March 7, 2006, The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued a restraining order temporarily enjoining the government's enforcement of IMBRA on one marriage broker based in Atlanta, European Connections and Tours, but that Order was dissolved in September 2006.
  • On May 26, 2006, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio refused to grant a similar restraining order, holding, "While the likelihood of success on the merits on the Equal Protection claim remains too unfocused to say what party is likely to prevail on the merits, all factors that yield a discernable answer point towards denying the requested TRO" [17] Judge Thomas Rose also stated: "The Supreme Court has never explicitly recognized a fundamental liberty interest in Americans meeting foreigners for intimate relationships."

[edit] Representation in the arts

The 1986 children's novel Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan, winner of the 1986 Newbery Medal, features a 19th century American mail-order bride, Sarah, who travels from Maine to Kansas to marry a farmer.

The feature-length 1991 BBC TV movie Filipina Dreamgirls was a fictionalised account of the stories of a number of couples.

The 2001 movie Birthday Girl, starring Nicole Kidman, is about a Russian mail-order bride who goes to live with a banker in the UK.

The 2001 British mini-series The Russian Bride features a bride sent to Britain to marry an introverted middle aged man with no interest in her. His domineering elderly mother organised the marriage so that somebody could look after him after she dies, and in the meantime she treats her as a servant.

The 2001 graphic novel Mail Order Bride by Mark Kalesniko is about Kyung Seo, who is more fully human than her Canadian suitor ever had anticipated. Neither party to the arrangement is satisfied by their new life together.

The 2003 movie A Foreign Affair starring David Arquette and Emily Mortimer is about two brothers seeking a bride using the internet. The movie "A Foreign Affair" was re-released as "Two Brothers and a Bride" and received good reviews.

The 2003 movie Mail Order Bride tries to find humor in a story about the Russian and Italian Mafia involved in the business of human smuggling.

The 2004 film Mail Order Wife is a mockumentary of a documentarian's attempt to film the marriage between a Queens-dwelling doorman and his Burmese bride.

An episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force titled "Mail-Order Bride" involves the characters Master Shake and Carl "splitting" a mail-order bride. Shake wants her to cook and clean; Carl wants her for sexual reasons.

The 2004 film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story has a character called Gordon (one of the Average Joes dodgeball team) who has a "Mail-Order Bride"

The 2005 series of Little Britain depicts a running comedy sketch concerning one Dudley Punt and his Thai mail-order bride Ting Tong Macadandang.

The 2005 short story Nadia, written by Judy Budnitz for her Nice Big American Baby collection of short stories, tells of a man who orders a mail order bride named Nadia.

The 2006 short film Mail Order Bride is an erotic horror comedy where a computer programmer orders a love doll which in turn end up to be a modern day Bride of Frankenstein. The film's title is a play on words and the story concept takes a lighthearted view of lonely people trying to solve relationship problems with modern technology.

An episode of My Name Is Earl featured a vendor of stolen merchandise who lives in a storage facility with a Russian mail-order bride.

A 1997 episode of Unhappily Ever After titled "From Russia with Love" featured Ryan ordering and nearly marrying a Russian mail order bride, played by actress Ivana Miličević.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sam, Borin. "Cambodian brides in Taiwan face beatings, other abuse", Radio Free Asia, 2006-12-02. Retrieved on 2006-12-14.

[edit] External links

[edit] Australia

[edit] Canada

[edit] Taiwan

[edit] USA

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