I work with a guy who has a Filipina wife. Just interacting with him on the job, I see he has some anal, control freak ways and before I even met his wife, I figured she was Asian (honestly, I've been batting 1000 in picking out the creepy white dudes I work with whom I know are too ugly or wierd to attract a modern American wife). Upon seeing her, everything in me just screamed "pedophile!" She may be older than she looks but she carries herself and talks like a little girl. Obviously without much else to do besides cater to him, she is constantly in the office sitting in our breakroom reading magazines or writing letters like she is in after school care - waiting for him to get off work. She tried to engage a group of us in conversation once and he yelled at her over something inane. I walked out in disgust. As a black female, I have no doubt in my mind that 200 years ago, he would have been slinking out to the slave quarters to rape slave women. Today these same creeps just have to go trolling third world countries. What is really gross is that my short, fat, rude and ignorant manager just returned from a vacation in the Philippines. Given some of the tasteless comments he's made in the past, I can only imagine what he did most of the time he was there ... It's so common out here that I try not to even look when I see some of those couples. It almost frightens me. YUCK!

The kind of man who uses these services may be a bit sketchy (understatement), but the woman involved presumably has few choices, all of which are sufficiently bad that marrying a stranger in a foreign country seems attractive. I'm guessing that the women who sign up for these services have poor marriage prospects at home, so that their options are to marry a third world asshole or a developed world guy who may or may not be an asshole. I know men who have married through this process, and they treat their wives poorly by American standards (in terms of expecting them to be 1950s style homemakers), but very well indeed by the standards expected of a wife in the woman's home country.

All of the above is 100% true. Usually these women (if they survive), stay just long enough to acquire citizenship and then leave, so there is a bit of usage on either side ... think I'd rather die in abject poverty ... more power to them.

There was an interesting article in my local "alternative" weekly about a tour set for american (mostly middle aged) men to find Thai wives. I thought it should be renamed the misogyny tour. Pretty much everything these men said was misogynistic and a lot of it was pretty racist as well.
http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-03-02/news/feature_1.html

I'm guessing that the women who sign up for these services have poor marriage prospects at home, so that their options are to marry a third world asshole or a developed world guy who may or may not be an asshole.

while it totally makes sense to assume such a thing from a first world vantage, i have to say that's entirely ridiculous. the main issue is not that Filipino men (for instance) are "third world assholes", but that the economic realities of certain environments leave people few options.

i would expect a little bit more sympathy for people - you know, human beings... women don't choose to sell themselves off to strangers because they figure they have a better chance of meeting a "good guy", but because centuries of colonization and economic exploitation have deprived millions of people of the means to eek out a living.

that's what this is about - not "third world asshole"s. that's some ridiculous bigotry. further, while i know there's plenty of variation in this world, people i've met in "third world" countries have, on the whole, been more caring, open, considerate and kind than "developed world" people. this goes for men as well as women - and it's pretty presumptuous to assert otherwise.

sorry for getting so longwinded about it, and i'm sure that was just a little slip, but that kinda ish really gets under my skin - judging folks you don't know is a trick to start with, when you're mad rich compared to those folks it's just messed up.

i mean, seriously, we're talking about people buying people - this isn't about the pool of men in economically exploited countries, this is about money and the fact that, while people are starving, other people can exploit them to no end.

you feminazis are incredible,you wonder why men are going outside the country for wives,read your postings. It has nothing to do with the ages of the women or the men. It's about having a real wife not a selfish shallow empty american woman whose big dream in life is to have an entire closet filled with designer clothes.My God you people are stupid.

The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act is being upheld by restraining orders in two states. We really need to rally behind Layli Miller-Muro (layli@tahirih.org) and show support. All could be lost if an injunction is achieved. Its actually shameful that a battle in the gender war has reached federal court. The real irony is that the fight is over how American men are allowed to communicate with "non-feminist" foreign women.

Oh, forgot to mention. Much of the dissent comes from this psycho site -

http://online-dating-rights.com/forum/index.php

I gave them a taste of my sentiment. Flame away!!

I am married to a young Russian women and I have traveled extensively overseas. My observation is that rich American men are going abroad in record numbers to meet their foreign brides. Foreign women are beautiful, slim, devoted and appreciative. Unfortunately, in the US, obesity has become a rampant problem among females. Due to obesity, many US women are also infested with cellulite. From a rich American guy's point of view, there are just not enough acceptable women in the US for marriage and hence, he goes abroad and bring home a young, beautiful, slender foreign bride. Most foreign women have enough self-respect to control their eating habits and thus, they are able to remain slim. More and more American men are going abroad to find young bride not afflicted by obesity or infested by cellulite and I don't think IMBRA will stop this. I am sorry, but the horse has already left the barn.

In the Ohio case, the Republican federal judge who is seeking to uphold IMBRA was forced to make the claim "The Supreme Court has never explicitly recognized a fundamental liberty interest in Americans meeting foreigners for relationships".

Do we really want to go that far?

IMBRA can be rewritten to provide for a brief background check of the American at the visa process. But we can't interfere with "hello". We really can't. There is no way this will make it past the Supreme Court.

Check out ifeminist.com. Do a search for their male order bride article. Wendy, the editor, may agree that some guys who think they're buying wives can't be felt sorry for if the new bride takes a hike after getting her green card...she still sees that the government cannot interfere in any American saying hello to anyone else.

Think about it.

Also, as the above poster pointed out, IMBRA cannot stop the trend in social globalization.

And racism is misplaced when an African American woman above claims to be somehow superior to a Filipina. One would expect her to be sensitive to racism...although I would agree that it is creepy to see big American white men seeking really small Asian women, I keep that to myself so as not to appear to be a bigot.

And with former Soviet women often being six feet tall and full figured and having read all the classic Russian literature, and with Moscow being the most expensive city in the world...I don't see an argument for even White Supremist American feminists to make that some suburban American woman is necessarily superior in any way to someone 20 years younger than she is at Moscow State University.

Think James Bond or Indiana Jones when you think of American men dating foreign women...with the occasional loser spending his life savings to be able to attend a social with 300 women and 5 men.

Caveat: Indiana Jones was not allowed to date foreign women, according to the studio that produced the films. James Bond only got away with it because he was "British."

Enough women in American audiences would have been offended to see Harrison Ford romancing a non-American woman.

Anyway...Japan is worse for its men now: There is a new trend for many businesses, including grocery stores, to put up "Women Only" signs. This resulted from men pinching women on subway cars, after which the subway authorities gave women their own subway cars.

Japan may become the first democracy to openly split, not between a left and right wing, but between genders.

The bottom line in Moscow is that losers from the USA cannot do well with the best looking and best educated college students whose families tend to earn more than the average American household...but they will date the best looking and best educated American men and they don't care about a 20 year age difference.

This latter is based on culture, not on "desperation." Read "War and Peace" and "Jane Eyre" and "Master i Margarita"...all highly regarded books in Russia.

This latter is what just has to be frightening to any American woman, whether feminist or not, who lived her life thinking that equality meant dating and marrying someone your own age.

Germaine Greer points out in her recent book "The Change"...that men cannot be trusted to accept this notion past the age of 35.

The hidden agenda behind IMBRA and the stigma against foreign dating...has a lot to do with this.

Well, I am marrying a Filipina in the early part of 2007. If the US decides to keep her out because of IMBRA, then I will settle my affairs here and move abroad so that I can be with the woman I love. I am tired of being told that because of past wrongs by people I do not even know that it is necessary to treat me like a criminal.

As far as American women go, they seem to no longer have the heart of a woman. Driven. Competitive. Hard. Why in the world would I want THAT for a wife?
If I could find what I wanted here, I would have done so, don't you think? Doesn’t make me a loser, as one African American woman would like to think. I am sorry it pisses you off that Asian women like me…wait. No, no I am not. It tickles me crazy that they like me because I worship the ground they walk on because they deserve it. It is also hilarious that I now find myself sympathizing with a brother who is dating a white woman. Both are equally hated on both sides. I really didn’t expect the acid from American women I have experienced. I almost said, “because I wanted my family to be multicultural,� but that is incorrect. America has walked away from me culturally. The Filipina culture of family first IS my culture. I simply had to go 10,000 miles to find a woman from my culture is all.

In America, getting laid is a pretty easy trick. Three dates is a pretty hard, fast rule and often only a guideline. If you cannot go out and find a nice looking lady in America who will sleep with you pretty quickly, you don't really want to do so. They are willing. But do you want that? I thought I did for a while. It is a cold way to live. The definition of a ‘relationship’ is someone you bump uglies with on a regular basis. Fidelity, trust, mutual respect…these concepts are so foreign to the modern American marriage that I will be a monk before I EVER even date another American woman, white or black.

So, why am I marrying a Filipina with Gold skin instead of white? Because from what I have personally experienced their hearts are better. FAMILY and loyalty to same is a trait I want my kids instilled with. Beautiful long jet black hair, gold skin, almond eyes, and bright bright smiles and quick laughter make them hard to resist, too. I can see myself being happy with her forever. I cannot see that with a white woman who has something to prove and who has been reared under the litany of crimes against "minorities and women." I wasn't there, had nothing to do with past wrongs. I don't owe anybody dick. If ANYBODY has a right to complain it is me because of the way my Choctaw ancestors were treated.