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?
Can you imagine if it really is true that the President signed Maria Cantwell's law (she is the Dem Senator from Washington State)...on an agreement that she would vote not to filibuster Alito?
So I have Alito now to protect my right to have Muslim terrorists watched...but I am supposed to be watched and monitored and controlled now as well...for trying to have a social life?? Is someone in the White House playing a practical joke?
Is anyone reading this involved in the Bush Administration?
If so, did the President sign this knowing it would be struck down...thus depriving the Democrats of an issue in the future?
That Rove, he's sly dog. I suppose he is letting us fight the small battles. They just throw us Freepers a bone to gnaw on once in a while. Have to keep the teeth sharp. LOL
Not even the resident feminists are bothering to defend this asinine legislation. Save one ridiculous feminist man.
[I know lots of"honorable"men who got screwed royally]
On the issue of fraud, Russia is like the wild west. Just a few months ago I paid $350 to have an apartment in Moscow for a week. When I returned with my suitcases 4 hours later...I learned the door had 2 locks and I only had one key. Their business model was to give out that one key to a new sucker every day, sometimes renting the apartment for a month with deposit.
There is no way to go to the police in Russia because the police will then ask you for your registration, which is never going to be perfect. Then the criminals threaten to make it so you never get a visa to Russia again.
The Danish guy who was shot by an airgun last week...the criminal was immediately let loose on bail and given the home address of the victim. The victim got scared and left Russia back to Denmark and the would-be murderer will now go free without anyone to bring charges against him.
In terms of women scamming American men...they are very easy to spot. First of all: never send money to a woman whom you've never met before. Period. Secondly, if she does know you and suddenly tells you that she lost her purse after withdrawing a year's salary ($2000 in the Ukraine) for her father based on mortgaging their apartment...know this to be the official Ukrainian setup line.
But...that said...Russia is still filled with the most wonderful of people and well worth going to. The women are very conservative, pro-military and pro-Bush at least in terms of the WOT including Iraq War. And they are not paranoid...they will wonder what these new US government forms are supposed to be all about after March 6th.
Orthodox Christian Russian women often do not have premarital sex for at least 4 months if at all after they meet a guy. Russia is not a place for sex tourists anymore.
Whatever......................
Never go to the Russian police.
The only way to get anything done is Russia is through the Russian mafia. Without which one is helpless. They are in fact easy to deal with. They are just looking to make a buck. Something any capitalist can understand.
I can tell you about one situation where I had taken a lot of laundry to the cleaners. But every time I went there the clothes were not ready. This went on for weeks. When it was clear to me that they were not going to return my rather expense clothes, I called Vitaly, my uhhh host. Three hours later the cleaners delivered my clothes to my flat.
It's a man's world.
Whatever what?
Your profile is filled with things like:
"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. Thomas Jefferson"
And yet you are OK with the idea that Bush obviously made a deal with the Democrat Maria Cantwell to pass her bogus law that the Republicans blocked last fall when it wasn't snuck away inside the socalled "Violence Against Women Act"?
Apparently you will be fine when Match.com is required by law to demand that all members go through a background check.
So if a left wing professor feels threatened by conservatives on campus and takes out restraining orders on them...these innocent conservatives have to put down, under penalty of law, on any application to MEET SOMEBODY that they have had a restraining order?
This cuts directly to the heart of all of our privacy and has nothing to do with "mail order brides".
By the way, I just got off a long Internet phone conversation with the USA's largest marriage broker. They are pissed and they agree with me that lots of little agencies need to break this law flagrantly until it is struck down as soon as possible.
Men will have to fill out forms on the honor system and not have to supply the date of birth. They will just have to say they do not have a criminal record anywhere and they have not ever had any restraining orders. And the men can lie about this no problem. They told me that half of all divorced men get restraining orders automatically put on them as a procedural matter. So one assumes that men will be expected to simply lie.
The real problem is that it will take 2 to 3 weeks before the women can get back to the agency to say that they saw the bogus document that carries no real information except the guys full name.
It is the imposition of this bureaucratic 2-3 week waiting period...that is infuriating everyone most...beside the outrageous robbery of the liberty that your profile talks about so highly.
[Three hours later the cleaners delivered my clothes to my flat.]
This is true. I had let my good contacts lapse by 2005, however. If I remember the name of the African American "friend" who set me up on this...I'll let you know. I still can't believe it was an American who set me up like that.
Another American creep owned the Anglo-American English School. He had about 10 Americans working for him at salaries of $1800 per month...but he was slow in paying them. The day before he died, he got a $2000 payment from clients and had to pay two teachers who needed to pay their rent. He owed them both $1800, but he gave them each about $400...because he needed $1200 to pay for his prostitute habit. That night he bought two whores from The Hungry Duck and they drugged him in his apartment. When he woke up as their boyfriends were carrying out his furniture, they banged him over the head with a pipe and killed him.
This happened last summer.
But still, Russia has the most fantastic people. I adore that country. The Russian Orthodox women are true Christians, not the feminist kind that say things like "whatever" regarding the need to preserve a basic human right (to say hello to someone) while sporting a profile that says they are a "Christian" who loves "liberty".
Your making light of this subject is nothing more than a weak evasion of the facts. Limited government and greater personal responsibility are universal conservative principles.
If you choose to voice support for nanny statist legislation such as this, that's your choice, but by doing so you will fail to meet any accepted standard for Conservatism.
Bad men often get what they deserve.
When I was part of the community that helped facilitate these marriages, one of the services we provided was to investigate a woman that a man was interested in. After all, it cost a fair amount of money to travel to and live in a CIS country.
Men with ill intentions were publicly humiliated and run off by every group I've been associated with. For the really bad actors, Vitaly would, for a small fee, uhhh, punish them.
When I traveled there I needed a full-time driver and interpreter. The driver was an Armenian who had fought in a war. He is the only guy I've met who could open a corked wine bottle with his bare hands. My interpreter was a gorgeous blond married to a black man. Her knowledge of American history was impressive. Even the simple looking women had a charm that transcended their looks.
You are correct about Russians being some of the finest people one could have the honor of knowing. I came to have a strong affinity for them, and continue to. Sighhh. I'm getting all nostalgic now.
Eastern Europe is definitely a man's world.
(Which is better, Russian borsh or Ukrainian?)
Why are we in this fix? It's simple...go look in the mirror...then study the scriptures...
I just wrote Democrat Senator Maria Cantwell asking her how people like me can report themselves when they break her law on March 7th.
We cannot enforce our sedition laws...I would like to see the Democrats and their loyal George Bush enforce the socalled mail order bride law when hundreds of agencies break the law and brag about it.
The sad thing is...they do have us men in a strangle-hold via the consulates. An American male has ZERO right to have a girlfriend come visit from Russia. He has to pretend he wants to marry her and apply via a mammoth bureaucracy for a fiance visa for a 90 day visit (after which she has to leave his side and go home if they are not married yet). The new law just limited this to 3 times per lifetime.
That means, if you are in love with someone but aren't ready to marry...the Democrats just succeeded in getting Bush to sign a law that says you get 3 ninety day periods of happiness per lifetime!
This is enforced insanity. It doesn't quite reach the Nazi Race Laws that said a German man couldn't date a Russian or Polish woman...but it comes pretty damned close to it.
And then the hugest crime: American men marry foreign women from non-terrorist countries...and our feminist government decides to punish them by not letting the wife get a visa to live with her husband in the USA!
And we're supposed to defend our country as soldiers?
Do you guys know the types of questions the liberal jackasses in our consulates ASK Russian women? They go right into their sex lives and basically call them whores, no matter who they are. They turn all the best looking young women down automatically...expecting them to appeal and make a lot of noise via powerful people in order to reverse the sentence.
I have a 21 year old friend in Moscow who recently got a multinational company to appeal her rejection for an American visa (to visit New York for 2 weeks). She is still furious at the rude way she was treated by left wing American consular officials.
One Russian woman had this to say about American feminism, "American women are hacking at the branch they are sitting on".
Horror stories concerning the fiancé visa process are common.
Part of the visa process is a criminal background check of the applicant. This is the appropriate time for the visa sponsor to do the same. Would you agree that is fair?
I should have the final say on whether my woman gets to live with me in my country, married or not. Period. :-)
That's the spirit, give no quarter.
To add insult to injury, this legislation is being passed while there are millions of illegal aliens living in America with impunity.
Every right, privilege, freedom, liberty and opportunity that American women enjoy, has be afforded them by the blood, sweat and tears of American men.
American men this very day are fighting and dying to preserve their freedoms, yet American men are treated like criminals with this kind of legislation.
And not a single word of opposition to this legislation by the women on this site. Where will it all end? I shudder to think.
I just spoke with the two largest dating sites that deal mostly with introducing foreign women.
They say that Match.com and Yahoo paid BIG DOLLARS to lobbyists to keep themselves out of this legislation. The new law excludes them because they "do most of their business introducing Americans to each other."
But they know they're next.
In addition...male Democrats are furious about this law as well. This is men vs the American women who want to control their lives...with Bush on the wrong side of the equation.
The big foreign intro services are rolling out their legal plans. More than 400,000 American men are going to be informed soon on whom to write to and what they can do to politically overturn this outrage.
The company I just talked to says that Senator Cantwell won't respond to their inquiries. She is a hit and run legislator. She probably won't respond to my question on how I can report myself for breaking the law.
Hags like her just wanted to score brownie points with liberal women who want to control our lives.
I would like to see Yahoo and Match.com help to get this nonsense overturned, despite the fact that they managed to lobby their way out of being effected by this law.
The right to meet someone in the USA without having to have a background check...is not too far away from being history if we don't react to this.
Ping
That's one way of looking at it, BUT, you're also going to open innocent law-abiding men to coercion and blackmail by well run mafia scams. This time with our government's assistance.
You need to re-read it. It has nothing to do with saying hello or being introduced to a friend of your girlfriends.
While I think the law is a silly attempt to protect foreign mail-order brides, it doesn't have near the consequences as your reading into it.
Law abiding men like Anastasia King's husband?
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