Posted on 02/14/2006 6:12:25 AM PST by GermanBusiness
The Violence Against Women Act signed by President Bush on Jan. 5 contains an almost unnoticed attachment.
Subtitle D, also known as the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBA), will become law when VAWA is enacted. The IMBA is an ostensibly noble measure with a surprising and ominous twist.
The scant attention directed toward the IMBA has been positive.
A headline in Washington State's The Daily Herald announced, "Mail-order brides gain protection" with the subtitle "The mother of a murdered immigrant hopes that pending federal legislation will keep foreign brides from abuse, neglect and slavery."
The "murdered immigrant" refers to Anastasia King, a "mail-order bride" from the former Soviet Union. In 2000, King was murdered by her husband in Washington State where the case created a sensation largely because the husband had violently assaulted a previous "mail-order bride."
Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who championed the measure for years, introduced the IMBA to Congress.
Some parts sound reasonable. For example, U.S. consulates will provide "mail-order brides" with brochures that explain their legal rights.
Other parts sound draconian. For example, the IMBA requires American men who wish to correspond with foreign women through private for-profit matchmaking agencies to first provide those businesses with their police records and other personal information to be turned over to the women.
Corresponding with a foreigner is legal. Marrying a foreigner is legal. Immigrating spouses and their husbands go through rigorous and lengthy screening before visas are issued. U.S. laws against violence protect "mail-order brides."
Now American men who wish to pursue a legal activity must release their government files to a foreign business and foreign individuals for their personal benefit.
(Note: The act's language is gender-neutral but its clear purpose is to protect foreign women from predatory American men. Application to "male-order husbands" would be incidental as such 'brides' are relatively rare.)
The disclosure requirement is detailed under the provision entitled "Obligations of International Marriage Broker With Respect to Mandatory Collection of Information."
An international broker cannot provide contact or general information on a foreign woman to an American man unless that broker first collects and discloses to the woman the following information about the man:
Every state of residence since the age of 18; Current or previous marriages as well as how and when they terminated; Information on children under 18; Any arrest or conviction related to controlled substances, alcohol or prostitution, making no distinction on arrests not leading to conviction; Any court orders, including temporary restraining orders, which are notoriously easy to procure; Any arrest or conviction for crimes ranging from "homicide" to "child neglect"; Any arrest or conviction for "similar activity in violation of Federal, State or local criminal law" without specifying what "similar" means. U.S. law will provide foreign women with extensive government information on American suitors that is not similarly offered to American women — which it shouldn't it be either.
Contacting a woman for romantic purposes — internationally or domestically — is not a crime. Those who do so are not a priori criminals who must prove themselves innocent before being allowed an e-mail exchange.
How many American men will be impacted by the IMBA?
(Theoretically once the standard of living in Russia is as good as here it may happen but by then most of those using agencies preditorially would have gone elsewhere)
I was reffering to Yoshkar Ola actually.
[The old communists that ran the soviet union would be proud.]
I don't know why I got attacked tonight by a bunch of freakazoid leftists who want regulation on single males.
But on matters of sex, marriage and happiness, I've long ago learned not to trust FReepers or Republicans. There is a very deep hatred for male sexual freedom on FR and an even deeper hatred for marital choice and happiness if its not to a screaming FReminist.
I am surprised that the worst offenders on this issue have been males. I wonder if they are the kind who, because they are already married, don't want other guys to be able to date gorgeous women and/or marry the smartest, best educated woman possible.
I voted for Bush only for the WOT and low taxes. I don't see him or FReepers all that interested in my rights.
This weekend, I will take the mail order bride issue to the left wing blogosphere...where the moonbats will really attack...but there will be a lot of cool single guys there too who just don't like Bush because of his association with Bob Jones University.
But I will also post an entirely new thread on FR when the biggest agency comes out with its new form.
I want to stress how the Mommy Government expects men to write down all the states he has lived in and submit that form to a total stranger who might be a Russian man scammer pretending to be a woman.
By the way: the majority of dating sites, even in Russia, are not scammers. The industry just isn't all that lucrative. Few companies make more than $1000 per month.
You've got us found out. We won't reset until Uncle sam is taking your DNA and giving your criminal and medical history to every women in a hundred feet of you automatically. Just on the off chance you might engage her in conversation. (/sarc)
"But which senators voted for this? How did they let this slip through?"
Looks like the feminists you're ranting about have taken over the entire Congress. The House version of the bill passed 415-4. The Senate version passed unanimously (it had 58 co-sponsors, from both parties).
It didn't "slip through"; even if you only read a summary of the bill (cf. Thomas.loc.gov), Subtitle D is prominently featured and impossible to miss.
(I dont doubt that there are well known and reputable agencies (probably run by Westerners), but I think the vast majority of agencies are dishonest. C'mon you've got guys with cash sending cash and gifts to girls they've never met, and like 1 in 100 or less ever show up to meet her. The mob doesn't ignore cash machines like that, nor do a couple guys looking for some quick easy cash.
No. One of my best friends is a 21 year old woman who is gorgeous and, with my help, is now allowed into the USA anytime she wants.
She can do this because she speaks great English now and works for a multinational (who gave her most of the help she needed, including an appeal and a complaint about the Embassy in Moscow treating her like a whore for wanting to come to the USA).
I am not happy that my current girlfriend, whose English is not good, would probably face enormous problems. Frankly, I wouldn't put her in front of a consular official because she has more class in her little finger than most of these left wing State Dept employees who might insult her.
I care about her too much not to take an insult to her by a State Dept employee into a major row involving an unrelenting campaign to get that employee exposed and fired.
But this BS situation could all change fast. Smart Americans know that Russian women are not as dangerous as Muslim men.
If you agree with the current situation...meaning you think it would be terrible for the USA to be flooded with millions of single Russian women instead of millions of single Muslim men...then you are kind of on the other side.
The men's movement would tell you 'don't call us, we'll call you' for political support.
[and like 1 in 100 or less ever show up to meet her.]
That is true and that is fantastic for American men who can speak Russian and have the means to actually travel.
It still leaves the fact that American men should have the same rights as Canadian men to say hello without regulation before that hello.
"with the jackass Democrat who wrote the bill standing next to him beaming."
"Biden-Hatch--Specter Violence Against Women Act of 2005, S. 1197."
Let's see.... three senators with their names on the Act.... I count one jackass Democrat.... out of three.
[Looks like the feminists you're ranting about have taken over the entire Congress. The House version of the bill passed 415-4. The Senate version passed unanimously (it had 58 co-sponsors, from both parties).]
Thanx for the info. Note that it failed to pass when it wasn't wrapped in the "Violence Against Women Act". So cowards who were clearly against it...let it pass because they were afraid of the female voters.
So I don't wonder why I prefer Europe to the USA.
Still, this won't survive the court system.
Do you honestly the the average person looking to get a Visa to the west would return home?
[You've got us found out. We won't reset until Uncle sam is taking your DNA and giving your criminal and medical history to every women in a hundred feet of you automatically]
You just described why this won't pass the courts.
No, they are not. They are the worst.
Here's a large quote from "Fred On Everything" from a column titled; "Will Someone for God's Sake Marry Maureen [Dowd]?"
Those of us who have wives from Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines, Chile, or China view Maureen as being a very strange creature indeed, perhaps expelled from a geothermal vent. (“Hi! I’m Fred. What’s your phylum?”) Like Maureen, so many gringas don’t seem to know who they are, what they are, what they want to be, or how to get there. I think of a tinkertoy construction made by an insane two-year-old: a lot of protruding parts that don’t fit together.By contrast foreign women are psychologically coherent. They are sexy because they are women and like being sexy, not as a Vaudeville act or marketing tool. Resentment is not their primary emotion. They love their children and regard raising them as a pleasure, not an imposition of which they are ashamed.
If you read Maureen and her littermates, you realize that they are those most uncomfortable of women, heterosexual man-haters. For example, Maureen, from her new book:
“Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death.”
Who would marry that? Yet it is classic Maureen, snotty, catty, hostile. As for her own Kevlar ego, there’s this, from her interview with Howard Kurtz:
“Even after a decade of writing a New York Times column, she admits to being ‘very thin-skinned’ about criticism. ‘I'm just not temperamentally suited to it,’ Dowd says. ‘The first couple of years I spent curled up on the floor and crying.’”
Oh.
The drumbeat of animosity is never missing from her hetero-anguished feminism. Men are vain, frightened, immature, unreliable, treacherous, fascinated by gewgaws, obsessed with sex, and unfaithful. Several questions arise. If men are so bad, why does Maureen want one? What kind of men has she been running around with? Those closely resembling herself, it sounds as if. Most to the point, why would any man want anything to do with such a woman?
This confusion and hostility has made the American woman into an internationally acclaimed shrew. Yes, there are degrees, and perhaps more exceptions than examples, but talk to white men from Washington to Hong Kong and you see the same shudder.
These gals are wound too tight. Recently I was aboard a highway bus in an American enclave in Mexico. A gringa wanted to get off where there was no stop. The driver didn’t understand her. In Mexico they speak Spanish, a point which apparently had eluded her. She began yelling at him abusively. (Verbatim quote: “You’re the worst! You suck! You’re the worst!”)
They do this. People notice. A friend somehow found himself talking with a gringa who had one of those puffy little white dogs you could buff a truck with. He said, “Cute little thing. I’ve got a real dog.” This mild witticism set her into yelling.
[Do you honestly the the average person looking to get a Visa to the west would return home?]
The upper middle class of Moscow? Yes. Moscow is better these days than most American cities. My friend, at 21, has a great $600 per month job at a multinational which supports her visa to the USA.
There are ways of getting around the ignorance of the US State Department. Multinationals have the kind of pull that can put the liberal civil servants in their place.
Otherwise, the bullies insult the women. Civil servants are like that. Insecure, going nowhere. The visa application civil servants at one major embassy here in Europe...bragged about how they were avoiding Iraq as an assignment. People to admire, right?
The fact is the majority of applicants are not upper class chicks from Moscow (who are doing great and see little reason to leave) Further they have the resources to GET a visa. If one has a good stable job, owns an apartment, and has an established family getting a visa is a piece of cake.
A single Russian girl living on her own with a typical low paying job doesn't.
(That's not to say it's great, my brother in law has little chance of being able to come visit for the same reason).
[Those of us who have wives from Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines, Chile, or China view Maureen as being a very strange creature indeed, perhaps expelled from a geothermal vent.]
That was a fun article. Welcome to the discussion.
But there are FReepers here who want you to fill out US femigovernment paperwork before you can be allowed to say hello to a foreign woman.
I am a Canadian (dual citizen) so I can get around this nonsense. I have more rights than an American who doesn't have citizenship elsewhere.
What part of 'marriage broker' do you not understand?
Or is it simply that marriage is like saying 'hi' to you?
[(That's not to say it's great, my brother in law has little chance of being able to come visit for the same reason).]
Now we are getting somewhere. You just said it wasn't great that the Mommy state won't let your brother-in-law come visit (while they let the Muslim students in like crazy).
So please tell me as a conservative (we are on FR)...why do you think that the US government has to have a form filled out by a specific man who has already been cleared as safe by an agency...and sent via snail mail to that woman without Internet while this man whom she would have otherwise married comes to Moscow and leaves without being able to get her contact information because of the slowness of the mail system in getting her to say that she viewed the stupid form?
Do conservatives suddenly treasure useless bureacracy and meddling in private lives in regulating who gets to say hello to each other on a dating site?
It's "Forty" dill weed. Just like "50" is not "Fivety", but "Fifty"; and "20" is not "Twoty", but "Twenty".
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