From this site:
“The International Marriage Brokers (IMB) industry has grown dramatically in recent years. This growth is a reflection of demands by American men for”traditional wives,”and concurrent worsening economic situations for women, particularly in Eurasia. Many of the men who use IMBs intentionally seek women who do not speak English and who were raised in cultures in which a married woman is expected to be subservient. Some of these men are violent predators who return to IMBs repeatedly to find their next victim. These women, unfamiliar with the US legal system and given, at best, incomplete information about their legal rights, can find themselves in grave danger. This rapidly growing industry is essentially unregulated.
“The urgency of this problem became clear when the Tahirih Justice Center worked with a Ukrainian woman who suffered brutal abuse by a husband with whom she was paired through a Maryland-based IMB. The woman’s efforts to seek help from the IMB president were futile; she minimized the abuse and assured the woman that such behavior was a”normal”part of American culture. She also gave her inaccurate information regarding her legal rights, leaving her with the clear impression that she had no choice but to endure the abuse or risk deportation:which is not true. Particularly outrageous was the fact that this woman was the husband’s third”mail order bride”and the agency was aware of the abuse inflicted upon the previous brides.
“The new data we have compiled shows that the number of such marriages has at least doubled since an often-cited 1999 INS report. It is now estimated that 8,000-16,000 marriages a year:a number that reflects one third to one half of all foreign fiancés who enter the US:take place between foreign women and American men as a result of”marriage broker”agency introductions. While no official national statistics exist on the incidence of abuse in such marriages, experts agree it is”higher in this population than for the nation as a whole.”One study of women in an analogous circumstance:immigrant women whose legal status depends on their US citizen or legal permanent resident spouse:found the rate of domestic violence to be as high as 77%.”
Related Women’s Enews article about: “A federal law that takes effect March 6 [which] requires that mail-order brides brought to the United States be informed of their immigration rights and the criminal histories of any husbands-to-be,” available here.
