I should clarify that… she’ll be eligible for permanent residency with no strings attached 2 years after they get married.
Thanks for the update!
I must admit it all seems a bit less funny now that there are actual specific lives involved. Then again, I recall reading a Lewis Grizzard column years ago in which he said the only truly, perfectly happy couple he knew had met via a mail-order bride outfit.
Bottom line: It looks shaky at best to me, but the fact is that there’s really no telling how it’ll end. Let’s not go killing chickens before they hatch.
Not-so-nitpicky: You keep referring to Honey as Russian and Kiev as in Russia. I hope for his sake Bubba doesn’t. The Ukrainians I know are quite proud of their own country, language, and customs, and aren’t likely to forget soon how the Soviet Union attempted to quash their regional identity.
On the other hand… my grandfather came from just outside of Kiev and he would get angry if you called him Ukranian and loudly correct you, “We are Russian!”. I never found out why. He came to the US when he was 11 years old so I doubt he knew too much about the situation.
Guin One of my friends became a mail-order bride. Her husband was a drunk who beat her into a miscarriage, but that wasn’t exactly domestic violence; it was called ‘life.’ She divorced him, but he didn’t pay child support, and she had to take in students to pay the rent. Her check was perpetually three months behind, and she had to live on crackers and stuff like that. There was quite a circle of friends there, and I think only one out of twenty women or so hadn’t been divorced. Maybe they were drawn together by similar circumstances, but it was my impression that divorce was very common. She, too, was from the Ukraine.
Bubba probably gets told this a lot, but he looks just like Wayne Knight (before his recent weight loss).
True. I’ve only just started learning how complex and varied the opinions are and it’s mind-boggling. My boyfriend related to me a saying, put two Ukrainians in a room together and you have three political parties. 
Bubba needs to be aware this might be a sensitive issue. Lordy, Bubba needs to be aware of a lot of things if he intends this to last. It sounds like this isn’t quite real to him yet. The more he thinks about her as a person instead of a Ready-Mix wife for a lonely guy, the better chance he has.
I haven’t spent as much time on the net as I have in the past. I may still have a link at home that connected to a bbs that had quite a few real stories, most bad. I think the part that frightened me the most was the 10 year liability. I’ll look for it tonight.
Long-time “honey thread” reader, first-time “honey-thread” poster.
I think the little girl in the photo is Honey’s daughter. Who else could she be? Hired help?
IT’S A TRAP!!!
[sub]sorry, i’ll shut up now[/sub]
Looking at Bubba, unless he becomes very wealthy or starts going to prostitutes, this is probably going to be his only opportunity to have sexual relations with an attractive woman, unfortunately.
Oh oy, Bubba is reaching for the sky with this one. He ain’t rich, doesn’t drive a beemer, ain’t no hunk of a man, 20 kilos overweight and 10 years over-aged, and his fashion sense leaves a great deal to be desired. And he goes find himself a young beautiful blond girl. Oh oy. Emmm… perhaps he has got a great personality or arresting charisma or is blindingly intelligent? Emmm… Oh oy. He’s massively outclassed – hope he enjoys his two years of bliss.
Margin, from what little I know of Bubba from this thread, he doesn’t sound like the wife beating sort to me.
I love the way I can buy a framed photo of Bubba and Honey for only $18.00.
By WinstonSmith: "Oh oy. Emmm… perhaps he has got a great personality or arresting charisma or is blindingly intelligent? "
No, no and no. He’s a hard worker, but only at things he chooses to work at. These are always schemes of his own devising, such as bees and gold dredging boats.
He refuses to be “Poor and hired out”, as the saying goes. He’s never cashed a paycheck, as he’s never worked for anyone else.
I don’t think he would tend toward domestic violence. He doesn’t drink, use drugs or go to churches, and his skills at chasing after women are obviously nil. Therefore he’s mostly free of vices.
However, he’ll expect her to keep house, work in the honey business, cook, raise children and go to law school in her spare time.
Oh, oy is appropriate!
The Russian/Ukraine thing is something they will have to work out for themselves. Among other items of concern.
The hat picture made me spit out my drink.
I blame you.
Regards,
-Bouncer-
PS: I hope they buck the statistics and end up happily married for 50 lovely years.
Um, hit “submit” too soon.
Economics over there: (According to Bubba)
Though none in the audience of picture viewers commented on this, Bubba explained that the reason we only see her in two outfits is that she only owns two sets of clothes. She alternated days, wearing one outfit while the other was drying from its washing.
When they traveled to her home, she carried her belongings in a brown paper bag. Bubba gave her one of his suitcases before he left, so she could ditch the bag.
The going salary for secretaries where she works converts to 43 cents per hour.
Most people there are thin. Food is expensive. Their goal is to have three good meals per week, and pick at dabs of food the rest of the time.
Walking is the normal way to travel all but the greatest of distances.
Over here, we’d call that Hard Times.
Yeah, Bouncer I hope so too. Who knows?
Umm… my thoughts exactly. Poor guy, he is a huge tub of unattractive goo. What those economically desperate gals must say to each other privately about the men that come hunting wives would probably blister the paint off walls.
Well, that’s what I mean-I didn’t mean desparate as in “pathetic”, but as truly desparate-the idea that your only hope is to marry a complete stranger by mail-it’s rather sad to think of people who are stuck in such a situation.
But I’m glad when things do turn out okay!
I’m guessing he was an ethnic Russian living in Ukraine. There is a very large ethnic Russian minority there, particularly in eastern Ukraine. If you want to read up, I’m happy to provide bibiliography on Soviet and post-Soviet ethnic relations…you can start with Rasma Karklin’s Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below, or if you want something a bit more readable, there’s the classic The Russians by Hedrick Smith, former NY Times Moscow bureau chief (and the update, The New Russians).
(My GF was born in Riga, Latvia, but was Jewish, and used to get mighty pissed off if anyone called him Russian.)
Here’s my take on the situation, for whatever it’s worth:
Bubba seems to have very little in the way of people skills. He particularly seems to have little empathy. WHY would he stiff someone (the OP) who had co-signed a loan for him? WHAT does he think he has to offer Honey, or a young woman like Honey? According to John Carter, he doesn’t have much in the way of financial reserves. Sperm donors are a dime a dozen. The ONLY thing he seems to be able to offer Honey is shopping and a ticket to the USA, and a probable green card. I don’t think he sees that. I think that he sees himself as a great catch.
Honey is desperate, and with good reason. I do believe that little girl is her daughter. I also believe that if Bubba and Honey do get married and she comes over, that Honey will coax Bubba to bring her “little sister or cousin” over to the US for the better opportunities. I really can’t blame Honey for doing whatever she can to get out of her grinding poverty, but I do think that she’s probably not going to be too concerned with morals. I think that Honey will spark with Bubba as long as he’s willing to take her shopping, dining, whatever. She DOES have something to offer, her sexiness. And that’s what Bubba sees, and nothing else.
I can’t help but wonder how and why a woman who is not a US citizen would study US law…except for those portions of the law that apply to immigration. I’d want to know what law she is studying. Ukrainian? Russian? US?
I predict that Honey will go through with the marriage if at ALL possible, get that little girl over to the US, probably avoid becoming pregnant (by Bubba, at any rate), and will get divorced on the day that she can do so while retaining the right to remain in the US.
However, maybe all she WANTS is a houseful of kids, and a chance to work hard to better herself. Bubba sounds like he might be a steady husband, if not an ideal one. But the ideal prospects probably don’t have to go overseas to look for wives. At any rate, she might very well settle into the marriage and be happy in it. I think that Bubba will be happy as long as SHE’S happily married to him. I hope this will work out…but I don’t put much faith in it at all.
Easy: Honey wants to stay in the U.S., and she knows that American lawyers make good money. There’s no reason one needs to be a U.S. citizen to practice law in the U.S.; in fact, one of my co-workers is a Russian citizen who is now a licensed attorney in the U.S. (She wasn’t a mail-order bride, however; she got her green card through the lottery.)