Mail Order Brides the issues

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the words mail-order bride? This is a term that has been all over the place for a long time and I was never really sure what it was, for a long time I really thought it was just a dating site or a site for escorts. Well I was wrong, a mail-order bride is a woman that states her intent to get married to someone from another country. Usually a country that is more financially stable than the country they are coming from. Each year the United States report 4,000-6,000 marriages that are a result of mail ordering brides. The countries that recieve the most mail-order brides are the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Germany, and Australia.

 There are many mail order brides that report abuse from their new husband. This abuse ranges from physical to mental abuse. The explotation of these girls in some cases have been true. Not every girl has agreed to go through with these marriages or are forced, but that falls under a completely different topic of human trafficing. There have been some marked cases of women who have fallen victim to murder by their husbands hand over the past few years.

1. Alla barney in 2003 had her throat slit in front of the couples four year old son. After killing Alla the husband ran off with the child, before finally turning the child over to a family friend and turning hisself in.

2. Susanna Blackwell was shot to death by her soon to be ex-husband in Washington State. After enduring many years of abuse she finally got a protective order(which apparently did not help things). She was shot while the divorce was in the process of being finalized.

3. Anastasia King was strangled to death by her husband in 2000, basically because he was ready for a new bride and did not want to pay for a divorce.

4. Nina Rester was another who was killed by her husband during a divorce. This happened more recently in 2006.

All of these cases are such a shame, these women came to America in search of love and happiness and ended up dead.

On the other hand it is not always the husband killing their wives. In South Carolina in 2002, Tessie Spotts, a mail-order bride, murdered her husband by slowly poisoning him to death.

 In 2006 the President Bush signed a bill in order to try and protect mail-order brides. The new law requires certain things from men, before they can be given information by a marriage broker. These things include:

1. The man must complete a questionaire on his criminal and martial background.

2. The man must be screened from all mental illnesses and disorders.

3. The seller must obrain the man's record from the National Sex Offenders Public Registry database.

4. The questionaire and record must be translated to the woman's native language and provided to her.

5. The woman must certify, for each specific individual, that she agrees to communication.

Now there are some issues with this law, a lot of people felt it protrayed american men as abusers, but once again that is another issue.

 Although there has been issues with the mail-order bride fad, it is not all bad. There are many women who live happily ever after and find true love. There are men who want these women as partners in live to love and cherish not to abuse. Stricter laws on the process will help prevent abuse in these situations. Really if you look it this way, the spousal abuse rate is about the same for traditional couples and couple who meet through the mail-order sites. Yet the divorce rate is very different, way less mail-order couples get divorced than traditional couples in the United States. So therefore it can not be all bad, there may be perks, as well as men being able to find a woman who they are attracted to and can love, and for some of the mail-order brides themselves finding love they have been looking for.