Mail Order Brides

Mail order Brides date back to the 19th century as men living in mining towns often longed for female companionship. Some preferred seeking a wife to buying a temporary connection with a prostitute. Thus, the need for women opened up another new business enterprise-- mail order brides. The lenient laws allowed for quick marriages and quicker divorces. According to the 1850 census, there were twice as many men as there were women in California. This ratio supported the business of the mail order bride.

Moving forward to modern times we now must talk of modern dating methods. Something which is no different to dating clubs in most western countries for men to meet ladies from their own country. This is the web based e-mail dating.

For some reason when this occurs on an international level it is often derogatorily called "Mail Order Brides".

This has taxed the lawmakers in the USA which introduced the 1996 Mail-Order Bride Act, Congress directed the Department of Justice to investigate fraud and domestic violence in mail-order marriages. But immigration officials don't collect data on these relationships, so after three years of fact-gathering the DOJ could offer only preliminary and suspect statistics. Based on 266 immigration cases, a small sample, the 1996 law required international marriage brokers to tell foreign brides about their rights to claim certain immigration benefits.

Currently Congress is considering the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act which would, "force agencies to ask each male client about his marital history and criminal background

But is it a broker's job to run a background check on a man simply because he wants to meet a foreign mate? The legislation before Congress exempts matchmaking services like Match.Com and Yahoo! Personals because these companies charge the same rates to men and women and to natives and foreigners. In light of the financial incentive that mail order brokers have to side with their male clients, it makes sense to treat brokers differently by requiring them to tell foreign brides about their immigration rights. However, it seems premature to impose background checks without more proof that the men who go to brokers to meet foreign women. Mail-order brides are adults who can only hope for the best and guard against the worst. They should proceed, as others do, at their own risk.

Further studies have elicited the following comments:

"As far as abuse is concerned...it seems logical that since men soliciting the help of the IIS/MA are almost exclusively well educated, have middle to upper class lifestyles, and have a higher than average paying job, that they are less likely to beat their wives than a lower class, uneducated, lower income American male. I would be surprised to find that my hypothesis is unsubstantiated by statistics."

Another comment representing an IMO argues that,

"The overwhelming majority of the men who use such services are sincerely wanting to find a woman with old fashioned values to love and cherish....The proposed regulations are obviously a ploy of the feminists to eventually abolish such services. The feminists do not want to see men happy. The INS should not be the puppet to the feminists' strings (sic). Until the day women in America can understand and accept the true meaning of feminism there will be a continuing flood of American men who will look overseas to find that 'real' woman."

Other comments included husbands and wives who met through IMOs writing joint letters to inform us of their happy and successful marriages.

"My wife and I were introduced over ten years ago through [XYZ]....After years of correspondence and several trips to each others' country we fell in love and were married. The results are three beautiful children"

So what is the answer - in general the majority of ladies who leave Thailand to marry settle down in a long stable relationship and often return to Thailand with their husbands finally to live and settle down.