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?
[You are promoting false advertisement and churning. Both of which are against the law.]
You've really got to get over the idea that I am in this business. I am an American citizen in Europe. I have a right to meet foreign women with ZERO regulation and it doesn't matter if this is via the local church or the Internet...it is none of your God-damned business.
Plus, I am a Canadian citizen as well. Apparently I have more rights as a Canadian now when it comes to getting to "hello."
If you read Russian there are several Moscow-based escort services where you can get numbers for those kinds of gorgeous women. (I suspect there's more than one in English as well)
Marriage agencies are entirely different, and American based ones are the subject of federal commerce regulation, and thus federal laws preventing false advertisement and churning apply.
If you are going to a business promising Russian women marraiges that business has a right to verify you are willing and able to before they introduce you and federal commerce laws have the right to force them to make every effort to know what they're selling lives up to what they're claiming.
I would say there are more scam agencies than legit ones though it's easy enough to verify. I know a guy who programmed a web site for a couple of them who felt there were only one or two legit agencies in town and there were well over 40 agencies.
If I had intended to mean simply 50 year olds or simply bald guys I wouldn't have put them all in one sentance.
Don't try recontruing my words.
[I have regular discussions with Senator Brownback's office on this very issue. Let me repeat, it will never happen.]
Who's kidding whom? You and I both know the realities. But that doesn't say that the many American males who are not happy with this nonsense shouldn't gather political clout over it. The current State Department attitude is a crime. You yourself had a terrible hassle getting your own wife or fiance into the country when she was not a terrorist.
As I realize that Republican politicians are no help on this, and we just got stabbed in the back with the soon to be overturned mail order bride "law"...I guess I won't be voting for anyone in 2008.
Maybe my Canadian citizenship will turn out to be more valuable than I thought.
I just wish that American males weren't such politically powerless wimps in the face of feminism.
Letting thousands of women into the country each year who have been fed false information and are being traffiked in is a risk to national security.
10th Ammendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.....except mail order brides, farm subsidies, $442 a night hotels for hurricane victims...blah blah blah
The old communists that ran the soviet union would be proud.
[If you are going to a business promising Russian women marraiges that business has a right to verify you are willing and able to before they introduce you and federal commerce laws have the right to force them to make every effort to know what they're selling lives up to what they're claiming.]
We will see you in court. Good agencies will check the sex offenders database and maybe have the guys fill out a form like the new one coming out (the agencies are making up their own forms that they will determine fits the fuzzy law). Where the strikedown in the courts needs to come is the idea that the agency has to send a nonsense form that doesn't say anything to a woman when she doesn't really want to get this and won't be able to make any kind of decision from it. No man is going to put "yes" to a criminal record. For women who have only postal addresses, this law destroys the ability to contact them in any reasonable period of time.
Take for instance: a man knows he is going to Moscow in ten days. He sees a woman who lives two hours outside of Moscow on the Internet. She wants to meet a nice guy. He wants to meet her. But the agency now has to send snail mail to her. Snail mail takes 3 weeks. She would respond with 3 weeks of snail mail as well.
The agency can, legally, only give her address to the man 4 weeks after he has already been to Moscow and returned home.
This is what I am talking about. It is a garbage law that severely gets in the way...and thus underscores what an outrage the regulation is in the first place.
It is none of your God-damned business if a woman wants to meet an American man and someone sells her email address, phone number or snail mail address to an American man.
Nobody died and made you God. Nobody died and made the American Congress God. And Bush Junior then happily signs single male rights away on January 6th...with the jackass Democrat who wrote the bill standing next to him beaming.
[Letting thousands of women into the country each year who have been fed false information]
Few are being fed false information and, if so, a few guys are pretending they don't work at Costco.
Now here you are an American male saying that Russian single women should not flood the USA like the Muslim illegal aliens who are now flooding the USA.
And you are saying the Russian women are a national security risk compared to the millions of Muslims who are chanting on our campuses.
Right.
Are you a troll? Are you here because I wrote Democrat Maria Cantwell and told her to monitor this thread?
Here you are giving a Democrat verification for her deed. Thanx FReeper.
[If you read Russian there are several Moscow-based escort services where you can get numbers for those kinds of gorgeous women]
Sorry. Any American in Europe knows the regular women are hundreds of times better looking than any whores. Young women who would have been whores in the past now choose Internet stripping.
Anti-churning laws have been on the books since the 20s as have false advertisement laws. There's no way this is getting overturned. People can legally lie, businesses cannot.
You apparently know a lot about this.
Few?
In addition to the woman Gary mentioned I know a woman who was brought to America by a gay guy as a cover so his parents (already saddened by his brother's marrying some guy and moving to vegas) would give him cash to buy a house.
95% of K-1 Visa holders return home before the end of 1 year.
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