Bill would arm mail-order brides with data

03/14/2006

Women would be allowed to read future spouses’ criminal history

BY MARTIGA LOHN
Associated Press

Mail-order brides pick up and move across continents with little information about the men they’re marrying.

That could change in Minnesota.

A state Senate committee Monday unanimously approved a bill that would put criminal-background checks and marital histories of prospective spouses in the hands of mail-order brides, in their own languages, before they commit.

Some brides end up in battered-women’s shelters in Minnesota after finding themselves in abusive relationships, advocates said.

“This is a growing problem,” Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFLSt. Paul, told the Senate Commerce Committee, which passed her bill on a voice vote. “We haven’t heard much about it in Minnesota.”

The state is home to more than 100 mail-order brides from the former Soviet Union, the Philippines and other impoverished countries, said Ilean Her, executive director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans. International marriage brokers help link them with American men through Web sites, catalogs and pen pal services.

But there’s been little regulation of the industry in the state, Pappas said.

Washington state, Hawaii, Missouri and Texas have laws regulating international marriage brokers, and Congress recently passed a law modeled on the Washington statute, said Leslie Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. Other states are considering similar legislation.

Arranging international marriages is big business, Wolfe said.

“It’s not the village matchmaker,” she said. “These are commercial enterprises that are businesses recruiting women with the promise of wealth and success in the United States with a rich husband.”

Jocelyn Ancheta works with abused mail-order brides as a volunteer with the Filipino American Women’s Network. She said some of the women are controlled by husbands who beat them, force them to do housework, take away their passports and threaten to withdraw support for legal immigration status.

Ancheta said the men find women through brokers who release intimate details about would-be brides, down to their bra size — but don’t tell the women about their rights.

“A lot of the women do not know the system. They’re isolated in some cases,” Ancheta said. “They don’t know what their rights are.”

Pappas’ bill would require international marriage brokers to inform foreign brides about domestic violence and immigration law. Violations could bring fines of as much as $20,000.