The Assualt On Foreign Bride Agencies

The media and advocates attempt to smear men who use foreign bride agencies as losers. They dishonestly claim ties between agencies and sex trafficking, pornography, and organized crime despite the absence of evidence for this charge. (my thoughts added in italics)

This article is reproduced from seattlepi.com.

"So it's a proud thing that Washington is pioneering protections for mail-order brides and on behalf of smuggled sex slaves -- a far sadder and more endangered sort of immigrant than the ones marching openly in the streets last week."

Foreign brides choose to join an agency to help them meet eligible Western men for marriage. Sexual slaves are raped daily by the people who capture them. Please provide evidence of a connection....

She says "Susana Blackwell, who came here from the Philippines as a mail-order bride, was shot to death in the King County Courthouse on the last day of her divorce trial. Also dead was the 8-month-old fetus she was carrying."

Women are abused and killed by men every day. The men who commit these crimes have issues with power and control. Men with these problems victimize American women, European women, and Filipina women.

"Helen Clement survived, but only barely. She was brought here by an international matchmaking organization for what turned out to be a sham union to a man still living with his ex-spouse. He kept her in servitude, threatening her with deportation."

See my response above.

"Like the woman who won last week's court case in Virginia, Clement's matchmaker kept her in the dark about her options. She wasn't told she could report spousal abuse and still remain in the country."

People break the law every day for money, see Enron.

"Now state lawmakers and social scientists are pushing for more protections. They want background information on the U.S. spouse to be mandatory, not just a matter of request. And they're working to establish the first task force in the nation to study sex tourism and the trafficking of human beings for labor and prostitution."

Once again attempting to tie men who marry foreign brides to sex trafficking. Why not have all men who marry provide a background check, they may have shot JFK

"Seattle is one of the places that women and girls as young as 14 have been found kept in apartments and forced to service as many as 20 sex customers a day under threat of force and deportation."

Sexual explotation and rape are criminal activities and abhorant. It's relation to the foreign bride industry?

"It sickens but doesn't surprise Sutapa Basu, director of the University of Washington's Women's Center and an assistant professor of women's studies. She says that even the relatively less exploited mail-order brides often know less about the men they agree to marry than a shopper knows about the ingredients in the soup they buy. On some mail-order Web sites the "product" is advertised in much the same way that an online store would sell a shirt."

Calling in the "academic" so we think this smear campaign has roots in real research. We know you are offended by the idea of foreign brides, now how about some evidence.

Yes, some foreign matchmaker marriages do work out, she allows. Like Kohl-Welles, she has learned to be careful. She has been the target of hate mail from those who call her a man-hater and contend that it's demanding women like her who force American men to "shop" for more compliant spouses outside the U.S.

Some of these marriages work out, try 80%. Go ahead professor, look it up! Demanding women like her, how about duplicitous.


"The mail-bride industry is especially popular in rural areas of Washington, where foreign wives who speak little English can be isolated and kept from knowing their rights and options. "Aside from anecdotes about abuse, we don't yet know the scope of the problem. It's only when someone gets murdered that we hear about it," Basu said."

Translation, these women are tied up by hicks and repeatedly gang raped. We don't know the scope of the problem, like 80% of foreign bride marriages lasting. Shame on you!

"They all told Basu they were afraid to come forward partly because they claimed that the Russian mafia controls the brokerages that brought them here. These businesses boast of shining "95 percent success rates" they don't want tarnished. So, if they divorced, the women feared reprisals against family members still at home.

There's still much work to do, Kohl-Welles said. "We're trying to do more documentation of how many are brought here, from where, and what happens to them -- the mail-order brides as well as those being trafficked for sex.""

NO distinction between sex traffickers who rape and force women into prostitution, and women who use foreign bride agencies. And why not throw "russian mafia" in the mix. Pleeeeaaaase!