I have recently been looking at some mail-order bride websites and have had several friends tell me that they are a scam. Some of them seem to be legitimate businesses and I now realize that I need the straight dope. Are these places scams? What do you really have to give these women in return for living in your home for two years?
Thanks for your help
Citizenship.
IgnorantinWV, you may be interested in this thread. Mail-Order Bride and Sour Honey. It’s very entertaining, but probably not very encouraging if you’re planning on ordering a bride. You might want to pay special attention to Eva Luna’s comments in that thread on immigration.
What is the significance of that two years reference? Wouldn’t the goal with getting a mail order bride be a permanent relationship?
The women can bail after two years and retain their residency.
Haj
I saw a movie (fiction) once on cable—I can’t remember the title—about two brothers who go to Russia (St. Petersburg, I think) on a mail-order-bride “tour,” which was very similar to the process Bubba went through in the thread cited by Miss Purl. The brothers, apparently, lived together on a Mid-western farm, and they were looking for a wife—in the singular. I’d missed the beginning, and I couldn’t figure out why they were looking for only one wife. Brother 1 was “conducting” the bride search, taking all kinds of notes, and interviewing the potential brides with a video camera, and evaluating them. Brother 2 was going to be the one to get married. Then Brother 1 comes out and says to Brother 2 something to the effect of: “Why do you care if you’re attracted to the woman? We’re here, spending all this money, so we can get two years of home-cooked meals.” I couldn’t figure out why two years (they never explained that). It seemed like a lot of expense and trouble just to get two years of home-cooked meals. “Haven’t they heard of take-out?” I thought.
Also, could a couple of Mid-western farmboys ever take a liking to black bread and borsht?
Well, I’m from the Midwest and I like black bread and borscht…
My husband has a cousin who went the mail order bride route and found a wife from Russia. The relationship has lasted more than 2 years, they seem very happy and very sincerely married.
And we’ve all heard horror stories.
I think it’s like any other meet-and-match service - sometimes it’s on the level and works, sometimes it’s a disaster for all involved, sometimes it’s a scam.
Evidently you have two years to woo this person…and if you do not manage to keep their attention they can leave you? Well Id say they should. Relationships are only successful if they are mutual. Keeping a person in your house with money, violence, and or plain old intimidation is a form of slavery, is it not? If you feel you have no other choice than to pay for a mail order bride, try getting out–do some exercise, read some books, do some healthy activities that will increase your social skills. That saying “you can’t buy love” is true! Now, if you arent looking for love, but you have some other purpose in mind, buy one of those love dolls from link removed, or a robot, or get yourself checked into a mental institution so that society will be protected from you, as you are likely to be some kind of psychopath.
guizot the movie you are thinking of is running on cable as “2 Brothers & a Bride” but was released as “A Foreign Affair”. Linky-
Good part: Tim Blake Nelson
Bad part: David Arquette
mrrealtime. The name of this forum is General Questions. We encourage factual answers and discourage personal attacks on another poster. If you really feel the need to moralize about the motives of IgnorantinWV, then feel free to do so in the Pit.
samclem GQ moderator
Try this site:
http://britishexpats.com/forum/
The Marriage-based forum will be helpful. Lots of people there have gone the mail order route.
I know, first hand (though some of this info is second hand) of 4 Russian brides (with 2 guys) who have gone this route. The guys have never been “scammed” in that they weren’t delivered the woman they arranged to have or had $$ ripped off. In three cases they met the woman in Russia before she came to the U.S., but in all there was extensive everyday communications for months before-hand (largely through e-mail). And to the OP: This is were the expectations were set – the website/service is selling “brides” and all that implies – what really matters is what the bride and you expect from each other.
BTW on outcomes:
1 horror story - girl shagging guys she knew from Russia while husband was at work.
2 didn’t work - One Lady went home because she was homesick she had a daughter and it was taking months to bring her over and she missed her too much (plus the DUDE she was with was weird as hell and actually the same husband no.1 above and on this 2nd try he re-began the process maybe 2 weeks after the infidelity - is the one who went home) - and on the second not working one guy and the girl divorced after maybe 2-3 years - he wasn’t bitter (maybe because of shared expectations?) because *his * try no.2 :
Has worked for about 5 years – she had 2 kids - here now - and they have 2 of their own and they seem “normal” and “happy” – Og knows the truth - but that is true of any marriage
samclem, point taken, you are correct. Please feel free to remove my post if possible.
thanks.
I am an American that lives in the Philippines, which might be the “mail order bride” capital of the world.
That term “mail order bride” is very misleading, it is not at all possible to just order a bride and have her delivered to you. You must visit her in her home country first, and show evidence of a relationship before she will be issued a visa and be allowed to travel. I have met many men that have travelled here to find a bride, and I hear much better stories about the women here than in Russia. Every marriage is probably a big gamble, but I think the more successful ones are where each person understands the differences in the cultures, and respects each other. The Philippines seems so different from America, and the men that travel here looking for a wife should spend the time to learn as much as possible about the woman they chose, and also her country and culture, IMHO. The scams can occur when the person you are communicating with is not really the person you think it is. The better agencies let you contact the woman directly, and do not force you to only communicate through the agency. Try to talk to her on the phone and see her on the webcam so you know that it is really her. The stories that I hear are that Russians are the highest risk due to their supposed culture of being willing to do anything to improve their life. The Latinas are better, but their may be problems with hot tempers. The Filipinas supposedly have the highest success rate due to their culture of adapting easily, and from being raised in a country where divorce is not legal or possible, so maybe they take the relationships more seriously.
But are we talking here in this thread about men who want real mail-order brides, or guys just looking for a hooker who’ll also act as housekeeper for 2 years? I’m sure that with the state of poverty and other conditions in much of the world, any American guy who’s got the cash wouldn’t have a problem finding a woman who would agree to such a deal to get permanent residency in the US.
Thus, are these agencies catering to people looking for an arrangement like the above, or are they aiming at folks who really do want a lasting relationship? Lots of women in the world tend to see marriage as more of a practical economic arrangement, without much notions of romantic love and such. This is particularly true for many in Asia, where locally arranged marriages are commonplace.
I don’t know. Although not an expert in things Asian, I have never encountered women who marry just for financial reasons. Certainly there are scam artists everywhere, but I see no indication that women in Asia are more mercurial and mercenary than those in America.
Filipinas seem especially interested in long-term relationships as divorce in illegal in their country.
I phrased my last post poorly. When I wrote “a practical economic arrangement, without much notions of romantic love and such”, I was thinking along of romantic in the sense idealized in pulp, Western romance novels. As in involving passionate, erotic things. Asians tend to be more interested in stable, long-term relationships. The economic aspects being more in the sense of of a cooperative partnership, rather than being individually mercenary.
My understanding is that many of these marriages end in divorce. Many of the women want legal citizenship in the US; marrying an American is one quick route to that goal. Of course, if the “marriage” only lasted thirty days, the government would see through the ruse and not grant citizenship. Presumedly the two year factor is some legal minumum to prove the marriage was “real”. The woman is now free to get divorced, remain in America, and look for a guy who didn’t need to use a mail-order bridal service to find a mate.
Wow, there sure are a lot of banned people in that thread.
Just sayin’, is all.
The last I checked, something like half of all marriages where an American marries another American citizen ends up in divorce. Is there any evidence that marriages that involve mail-order brides fail with greater frequency? Also, is there any evidence that American men who get mail-order brides tend to be losers who “need to use a mail-order bridal service to find a mate”? From a quick look around various mail order bride websites, the total costs involved tend to be pricey. So pricey that it if the guy was just looking for woman who’d be willing to have sex with him and be a housekeeper for 2 years until she could dump him, a financially sensible American guy would do better just to look for a poor American girlfriend who would do the same. The advantage to seeking an American woman would be there wouldn’t be that big, up front cost of a mail-order bride at risk. If the American girlfriend doesn’t work out after a month or 2, just quickly dump her and find a replacement.