| 2006-02-09 |
IMBRA explained |
I had hard time believing myself that such a law, severely limiting American men's ability to date and marry foreign brides, could pass Congress. For some time I thought it was a hoax, but turned out to be true. Main provisions of the new law come into effect on March 5, 2006. This will drastically change the international romance scene.
The main provisions of IMBRA place limits on number of "K" visa petitions a man may file for his potential bride in a certain time period, and also (most importantly) require that a man discloses all his past criminal history, visa petition history, past marital and divorce history, ages of children under age 18 to the lady BEFORE he can get her contact information or otherwise communicate with her. The agency must collect this information, then check the National Sex Offender public registry and state public registry for each man, provide all this information to the lady, and secure a signed and written consent from the lady to release her contact information to that particular man.
There are many things wrong with this law, but the most unconstitutional is to require men to disclose such personal information to somebody they have not met or even communicated with. When you see her on our website all you know about her is her first name, some bio information, and a pretty picture. Now government says that for the privilege just to say "Hi" you must disclose all this very personal information to her.
Significant additional requirements and costs passed on to the agencies (men's background checks and securing a written consent from the lady) will drive many agencies either abroad or out of business.
We need to act now all together in order to oppose this unjust law. Feminists, who wrote and pushed this law, disguising their intentions by a pretty cause of protecting women, in fact are eliminating competition by effectively precluding those same women from coming to the US.
I want to make it very clear, nobody is against protecting women. Yes, those women coming to the US on "fiancee" visas should be protected from abusers, and informed in the best way possible. That's why it's not at all a bad idea to do background checks on both men and women when they apply for her "fiancee" visa. That means they are getting serious about their relationship. That's a good time to make sure he is not repeated abuser, and if he is, inform the woman about it and let her decide. But requiring men to disclose his background information before they even say "Hi" will turn off a lot of guys and drive a lot of international introduction agencies out of business. This will effectively make the process of finding love overseas so much harder.
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