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June 13, 2008
 Meet Rose—A Prospective Fiancée Visa Bride Currently Working In A Filipino Sex Club
By Joe
Guzzardi
My last three columns have been about
Senators Dianne Feinstein,
Teddy Kennedy and La Raza loudmouth
Janet Murguia.
It’s time to write about something more amusing. How about
sex?
In reality, today’s subject—fiancée visas—is only indirectly
about
sex. And K-1 visas are not really funny at all. They play a
major role in the rampant non-immigrant visa abuse that shows no
sign of abating.
Still, writing about fiancée visas is a refreshing change of
subject from chronicling the treasonous behavior of the usual
suspects.
And—added bonus—VDARE.COM
readers love K-1 visa columns!
Rarely a week goes by that I don’t get correspondence from
someone who either has been taken to the cleaners by his
foreign-born bride. Or from someone else who claims that I don’t
know what I’m talking about because he found the love of his
life halfway around the world.
Although I’ve been reporting on fiancée visa fraud since
2002, when I told the story of Abby, a fiancée bride/student
in one of my
English as a Second Language classes, I’m still surprised
when readers, in all sincerity, tell me that they could only
find happiness on the other side of the globe.
A reader from, for example Pocatello, Idaho, writes to say that
after a futile three-decade search in the continental United
States, he finally found his “soul
mate” in
Bangkok, more than
8,000 miles away.
Such a statement defies credibility. It’s more likely to be
heard—and believed—in a junior high school hallway. Are there no
single, suitable women in nearby Boise, Seattle or Portland?
And the
letters in defense of the fiancée visa have an angry tone.
Who am I, the happily married want to know, to deny them their
one true love?
I’ll repeat the disclaimer that I add to all my fiancée visa
columns: I know that many marriages facilitated by these visas
are
loving and will be long lasting.
But I also know, from my own classroom observations, that many
mail-order bride unions end, at best, with separation—and, at
worst, in
rip-off, anguish and financial disaster.
Whether marriages to foreign-born brides work out or don’t is
not my primary concern. My interest is in reducing the legal
immigration facilitated by visa fraud, and in ending chain
migration that is an extension of non-immigrant visas.
And since, in
another recent column, I identified legal immigration as a
bigger problem than the illegal immigration, consider today’s
piece the first in an ongoing series of articles intended to
bring more attention to visa fraud.
Today, we’ll profile one of the prospective brides—Rose, a
personal acquaintance of reader “Stanley”—and we’ll
detail just how
shockingly little is required to obtain a fiancée visa.
Creativity is the essential ingredient.
Rose is one of tens of thousands of prospective “soul mates”
currently available to you on one of the hundreds of
Internet agencies designed to hook you up.
And Stanley is an American who frequently travels to the
Philippines where, on a recent trip, he befriended the bar
girl at a sex club on internationally-notorious
Santos Street.
Here’s Rose’s story.
As it comes to pass, Rose has an alter ego to her hooker
persona.
A few months ago, hearing her biological clock tick and knowing
that her best days as a top-earning
prostitute (it’s a competitive career in the Philippines)
are quickly passing her by, Rose invested a few hundred dollars
in a cute summer dress, a flattering haircut, good make-up, a
professional photographer and advertised herself on
an agency that specializes in finding American husbands for
Asian women.
Rose listed her hobbies as
cooking and long moonlit walks along the beach—sure-fire
winning qualities
for Internet saps.
These deceits are a logical extension of Rose’s
profession: tell the customer what he wants to hear and make
sure he
comes back for more.
Think about it. If you were down and out in a Third World
country and faced a grim future, why not
take a shot at the big prize—a U.S. Green Card? You have
nothing to lose.
And, sure enough, within no time, Rose’s e-mail filled up with
messages from the lonely-hearted. Rose struck up a dialogue with
a lucrative prospect in Alabama who sent her Western Union money
orders in amounts of several hundred dollars a clip so
she—supposedly—can buy sundries in anticipation of her trip to
America.
And, Stanley tells me, Rose is indeed anxious to come to the
United States…but not to live in Alabama. Rose has family in
California so she’ll be headed there just as soon as she gets
her visa and lands stateside.
What’s to stop Rose from breaking the
terms of her fiancée visa—that is, to marry Mr. Alabama
within 90 days upon her U.S. arrival?
Absolutely nothing.
And “nothing” is pretty much all anyone has to do to
acquire a fiancée visa in the first place.
Since there is no legal proof that documents that a
person intends to marry, the visa is preposterous on its face.
All any applicant has to do is claim that she’s engaged.
And, as the
fiancée visa regulations are currently written, the couple
only has to prove that they have
met in person at least once within the last two years
as well as pass a physical and basic background check.
As evidence of “courting,”
photos will suffice. The Internet agencies are happy to
advise you on how to best take those happy snapshots.
One site suggests taking as many pictures as possible with all
the women whose acquaintance you make at the introductory “socials”—where
dozens of willing and eager women parade themselves among their
potential husbands—since you never know who your lucky choice
might be.
Looking back to 2002 when I wrote my column about Abby, I wish I
had counted the numbers of Internet sites that provide
introductions of men to women (and occasionally women to men)
and offer assistance in
filing for the K-1 visa so that I could compare that total
to today’s.
Since I didn’t, I’m left to make the educated guess that more
than ten times the number of sites is out there than six years
ago.
And I’d also love to know how many visas are issued based on
legitimate circumstances—a businessman travels to
Brazil, meets a woman, gets to know her over the next
several trips, falls in love, etc.—versus the mail-order bride
scams.
That statistic, alas, is not available.
Let’s imagine for a moment that Congress were to wake up and get
serious about ending
visa fraud. And let’s further fantasize that it correctly
identified the K-1 visa as particularly useless and wide-open to
abuse.
Who, pray tell, would make up the lobby to defend the K-1? That
would consist of white, middle class American males—a
demographic that, as we all know, has no muscle whatsoever.
For the hopelessly romantic of you out there, here’s another
consideration that should temper your enthusiasm.
The K-1 visa entitles its holder to
a work permit, something most immediately apply for. The
happy bride will soon be out in the employment market
competing—possibly
with you—for the ever fewer jobs in today’s tight economy.
All the foreign-born brides I know work. They don’t have great
jobs—hospital
employees, nursing home
care givers,
cashiers,
waitress—but they’re jobs many Americans would eagerly snap
up.
And once the newly-arrived enter the work place, they’re
positioned to move up into jobs with higher salaries and
benefits
When a non-immigrant visa like the K-1 doesn’t serve America’s
common good and is, in fact counterproductive to the nation’s
best interests, the decision to eliminate it should be an easy
one.
Now here comes the hard part.
Someone in Congress has to step up to the plate.
Or should I say, step up to the altar?
Joe Guzzardi [e-mail
him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor.
In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has
been writing
a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive
to
VDARE.COM. |
