Internationally brokered marriages

[CM156_v1legacy]

Or as they?re also known as, mail-order brides.

I?m sure everyone is familiar with the concept. A man pays to correspond with a woman in another country, and often, they decide to get married. From what I?ve found, it happens for about 4,000-10,000 couples each year in the United States.

I was wondering what you, dear readers, though of the idea.

Personally, one of my father?s friends did this. The man in question worked hard at his job, and didn?t have time for a relationship until he was about 30 or so, and had no luck with local women. His wife-to-be was from the Philippines, and she wanted to move to the states and have children, in order to give them a better life. They?ve been married for something upwards of 20 years now, and very happily so.

However, some criticize this practice, arguing that women are often abused in these relationships, and that it is not reported for fear of deportation.

So again, what do you think of the mail order bride business, and do you know anyone who met their spouse this way?

 

[CoffeeOfDoom]

If they both agree to it then I don't see what the problem is, it's not like she is being coerced into it - if she was I wouldn't agree with the practice.
There's a couple who come into my work that I chat to that are a 'mail order bride couple', they seem very happy together and get on well.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I think any sort of marriage is foul and detestable; the mail-order principle just adds a bit more questionability to the whole affair. In short, I find the whole thing objectionable, but moreso because of the marriage bit than the mail-order bit.

If you're being serious and not facetious, might I ask why you feel that way about marriage?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Can I order those without marriage? Then I'll take 5.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

If there is no evident coercion involved in the matter, and the two individuals actually get along rather well, both emotionally and financially, then it is not concern of anyone's outside of the two participating individuals. Obviously, if the situation is anything otherwise, then legal issues will present themselves.

That is frankly all there is to say.

 

[Therumancer]

Or as they?re also known as, mail-order brides.

I?m sure everyone is familiar with the concept. A man pays to correspond with a woman in another country, and often, they decide to get married. From what I?ve found, it happens for about 4,000-10,000 couples each year in the United States.

I was wondering what you, dear readers, though of the idea.

Personally, one of my father?s friends did this. The man in question worked hard at his job, and didn?t have time for a relationship until he was about 30 or so, and had no luck with local women. His wife-to-be was from the Philippines, and she wanted to move to the states and have children, in order to give them a better life. They?ve been married for something upwards of 20 years now, and very happily so.

However, some criticize this practice, arguing that women are often abused in these relationships, and that it is not reported for fear of deportation.

So again, what do you think of the mail order bride business, and do you know anyone who met their spouse this way?

I don't care for the practice due to the way it bypasses the normal immigration process. That's another 4000 to 10000 people coming into the country each year at a time when we should really be looking towards reducing the number of new people coming into the US from other countries each year due to the tensions already present here and the increasing strain on resources. Basically, we need to take care of the people we have first.

What's more, while your relaying a happy ending to the situation, as often as not the person being married overseas will come to the US, remain married for a set amount of time, and when the citizenship solidifies they will demand a divorce, talk half of what the person they married has, and then go on to just be a US citizen on their own. It's a "seduction for citizenship" arrangement so to speak.

More than one poor schlub who couldn't get a girl to save their life due to being a loser has hooked up this way, and then had what life they had ruined even more.

The lack of safeguards (since you can't force someone to stay married/put out/have kids) and the way it bypasses the system we have in place... meaning the spouses in question don't have to wait their turn like everyone else (even if you don't shut it down entirely) means that I think this should be made outright illegal.

As I've said in other posts as well I think that there needs to be a system to remove citizenships from immigrants who don't adequetly adapt to society by learning english and similar things. perhaps even going to the point of being able to remove citizenship up to 2 or 3 generations down the road. I think Mail Order Brides who get divorced probably should lose citizenship along with any children and be deported back to the country of origin. All stories about people abusing their brdes are probably few and far between, I hear far more stories about guys basically being used as a "get into the USA free" card and then divorced with the ensuing problems.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I?m sure everyone is familiar with the concept. A man pays to correspond with a woman in another country, and often, they decide to get married.

This is no odder than people who meet through a dating service or over the internet or in a bar. It's just another place to meet people. Nothing forces those women to marry you or you to marry them. It's just another type of dating service.

However, some criticize this practice, arguing that women are often abused in these relationships, and that it is not reported for fear of deportation.

Women (and men) can be abused in any relationship. There is no reason to suggest it is more likely in these marriages. If anything, these woman often come from countries where they would be more likely to be abused at home and might not have police sympathy if they were.

As for deportation, many countries do not deport women under those circumstances.

The biggest risk is often to the person from the developed world who will discover they were just being used to get a passport.

So again, what do you think of the mail order bride business, and do you know anyone who met their spouse this way?

Yup, an old friend of the family. He was a very religious man, but also a man of science. He was an ordained minister and taught religion at a seminary, but also had two PhDs and used his summers off on to dig for dinosaurs. He found it difficult to find someone who shared his world view. When he was in his late 40 he met a 20ish girl from the Philipeans through one of those services. After a year of talking/writing and a few visits, they got married. It's been about 20 years now, and I hear they still dote on each other like newlyweds. I think they had 3 or 4 kids.

I will say that Religion plays a large factor in a lot of those marriages. My father's friend was very much a man of faith, as was his wife. They are still heavily involved in their church now a days, from what I've been told.

From what I understand, men in these relationships often want children, but are at the age where someone their age couldn't really have any.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Double post. Sorry about that. Computer was acting funky.

 

[fenrizz]

Or as they?re also known as, mail-order brides.

I?m sure everyone is familiar with the concept. A man pays to correspond with a woman in another country, and often, they decide to get married. From what I?ve found, it happens for about 4,000-10,000 couples each year in the United States.

I was wondering what you, dear readers, though of the idea.

Personally, one of my father?s friends did this. The man in question worked hard at his job, and didn?t have time for a relationship until he was about 30 or so, and had no luck with local women. His wife-to-be was from the Philippines, and she wanted to move to the states and have children, in order to give them a better life. They?ve been married for something upwards of 20 years now, and very happily so.

However, some criticize this practice, arguing that women are often abused in these relationships, and that it is not reported for fear of deportation.

So again, what do you think of the mail order bride business, and do you know anyone who met their spouse this way?

I don't care for the practice due to the way it bypasses the normal immigration process. That's another 4000 to 10000 people coming into the country each year at a time when we should really be looking towards reducing the number of new people coming into the US from other countries each year due to the tensions already present here and the increasing strain on resources. Basically, we need to take care of the people we have first.

What's more, while your relaying a happy ending to the situation, as often as not the person being married overseas will come to the US, remain married for a set amount of time, and when the citizenship solidifies they will demand a divorce, talk half of what the person they married has, and then go on to just be a US citizen on their own. It's a "seduction for citizenship" arrangement so to speak.

More than one poor schlub who couldn't get a girl to save their life due to being a loser has hooked up this way, and then had what life they had ruined even more.

The lack of safeguards (since you can't force someone to stay married/put out/have kids) and the way it bypasses the system we have in place... meaning the spouses in question don't have to wait their turn like everyone else (even if you don't shut it down entirely) means that I think this should be made outright illegal.

As I've said in other posts as well I think that there needs to be a system to remove citizenships from immigrants who don't adequetly adapt to society by learning english and similar things. perhaps even going to the point of being able to remove citizenship up to 2 or 3 generations down the road. I think Mail Order Brides who get divorced probably should lose citizenship along with any children and be deported back to the country of origin. All stories about people abusing their brdes are probably few and far between, I hear far more stories about guys basically being used as a "get into the USA free" card and then divorced with the ensuing problems.

Because civil rights can go screw themselves, am I right?

First off, my friend, in case you haven't heard, USA has no official language.
English may be the de facto national language, but that is far from being the official language.

Secondly, how do you suppose one goes about taking away the citizenship of people that grown up in the USA and their children?
Deport them? To where I ask.
Just make them second class citizens? Deny them their civil rights?

Do remember that your country is founded on immigration.

 

[Esotera]

I think any sort of marriage is foul and detestable; the mail-order principle just adds a bit more questionability to the whole affair. In short, I find the whole thing objectionable, but moreso because of the marriage bit than the mail-order bit.

If you're being serious and not facetious, might I ask why you feel that way about marriage?

I feel a similar way, although nowhere near as strongly. Basically the idea that two people need to assert their love for each other through what is usually an elaborate & expensive ceremony, and receive tax breaks for it, has never made sense to me. Also it locks couples in a relationship; is it worse breaking up with someone, or getting a divorce? There's still a big social stigma around divorce in some parts. Also a fair percentage of marriages are arranged, which is a bit dodgy...

If people sincerely want to do it though, then they should be allowed to.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I think any sort of marriage is foul and detestable; the mail-order principle just adds a bit more questionability to the whole affair. In short, I find the whole thing objectionable, but moreso because of the marriage bit than the mail-order bit.

If you're being serious and not facetious, might I ask why you feel that way about marriage?

I feel a similar way, although nowhere near as strongly. Basically the idea that two people need to assert their love for each other through what is usually an elaborate & expensive ceremony, and receive tax breaks for it, has never made sense to me. Also it locks couples in a relationship; is it worse breaking up with someone, or getting a divorce? There's still a big social stigma around divorce in some parts. Also a fair percentage of marriages are arranged, which is a bit dodgy...

If people sincerely want to do it though, then they should be allowed to.

I think the idea is that marriages provide a more stable and concrete environment for raising children. It goes back to the whole "family-unit" argument.

 

[Therumancer]

[
Because civil rights can go screw themselves, am I right?

First off, my friend, in case you haven't heard, USA has no official language.
English may be the de facto national language, but that is far from being the official language.

Secondly, how do you suppose one goes about taking away the citizenship of people that grown up in the USA and their children?
Deport them? To where I ask.
Just make them second class citizens? Deny them their civil rights?

Do remember that your country is founded on immigration.

A lot of the modern, left-wing, take on civil rights? Yes it can go screw itself to be honest.

Let me be blunt, the US is broke, and we saw this coming a long way off. It's great to say "hey, we'll take any poor person with a dream that wants a better life" but the simple truth is we can't afford that anymore, and when there are serious doubts about being able to pay people what they are owed through the social security system they paid into to begin with, the last thing we need to be doing is bring in MORE people to put a strain on the system. Right now my father is injured, he got hurt doing his job in The Department Of Corrections (he was a prison guard), The State Of Connecticut admit it owes him money, but won't pay him because it's broke and is involved in the govermental version of giving him an "IOU for when we can afford it". Needless to say this kind of thing renders me increasingly unsympathetic to immigrants coming into the country with the shirt on their
back and a dream.

As I see things, doing the unpleasant things now, gives us an increased chance of recovering, and being able to chill out again in the future. I understand the point of view that if we change now, we'll NEVER go back to this way of doing things (which I disagree with), but at the same time we're looking at a situation where if we continue on this path we won't have a country anything like it is now.

Also, my comments about immigration are just one aspect of the entire thing, not a single, overall solution to everything. If you read my posts, you might not agree with them, but you'll notice I'm pretty hardcore on a LOT of issues, that while not pleasant cumulatively amount to changes in policy that I feel will make a differance.

Basically, I'm a realist, simply put the US can't afford to be the huge group of nice guys we have been so far. We have obligations to the people that are already here... and trust me, at it's worst this is NOTHING compared to the simple fact that I think the US should be causing famines and mass starvation. One of the reasons why the US is in debt is that we give out all kinds of money and aid internationally to prop up other countries. When we can't keep our own house in order, charity is the first thing that needs to go. This means a lot of those countries are going to collapse, or be unable to feed their people, one of the big things the US produces is wheat... we're almost literally the breadbasket of the world, and we're pretty generous with it. Cut the aid, raise the prices on what we produce into more of an actual business, and take care of ourselves for a while. Of course in doing so we'll probably kill a billion people or so, but ones that are going to die anyway if the US falls since we won't be able to provide for them then either.

As far as things like English not being an official language, your correct only in the sense that we never formalized it, we probably should, if for no other reason than it helps to form a solid, verifiable standard for doing what we need to do. Truthfully we already have problems with internal strife caused by communication barriers that can be dealt with, and there are contreversies during elections and such with people being unable to understand the issues due to a lack of availible information, issues about things like newspapers in Chinatown and other location having a lot of misinformation that isn't noticed by the mono-lingual have been issues in the past and cause a problem with our system (which I won't go into right now).

When it comes to people who were born here, but don't fit in with society, well again we have trouble paying people who DO fit in with society, and have spent decades doing things for the people (like my father, working for the state, in a rather thankless job, and having increasing financial problems since the state simply can't pay him what it admit it owes after being injured and unable to work). As for where those people go, the answer is simply "anywhere but here". If they wind up dying, oh well. We're talking practicality here, not being nice. Personally I'd take one of the islands the US owns, dump them out there, tell the international community "this is our dumping ground, feel free to come and collect the people that don't work within our society", and then either another country adopts them or it doesn't. If nobody else wants to take them or can afford it, why should we?

Honestly though, don't get the wrong impression. I think in reality we'd wind up dumping very few people who were born here due to the presented oppertunities. I think once it was realized that we were serious you'd instead seeing a lot more cultural adaption, less people deciding that they want to be Chinese but draw American benefits and living in isolated communites, or deciding not to learn english even if they are born here to "make a point" and getting by in ethnically isolated communities. See, when you adapt a position of tolerance people don't even bother to try and fit in anymore, and instead push the limits of that tolerance.

As far as the benefits go, being able to communicate easily throughout the entire country would deal with a lot of problems.

In the end the issue of dumping people's citizenship would mostly affect people coming in as first generation immigrants. Those who have actually lived in the US will largely take advantage of the oppertunities already presented, doing things like learning english in school as opposed to blowing it off or deciding to not use it and letting the skills decay to the point where they might as well never have learned it.

In a practical sense the people born here that are going to be most affected are "anchor babies" but being babies and children they are just going to be going back to their parent's country, they generally have dual citizenship to begin with, in this case they would just be a citizen of the country the parents are from, rather than a US citizen as well.

 

[LordFisheh]

Just make them second class citizens? Deny them their civil rights?

Do remember that your country is founded on immigration.

Up until very recently, the US had absolutely no problem with doing that. You didn't even have to be an ethnic minority, really. With US racism seeming more and more common, at least on the internet, it doesn't look impossible. But don't worry; they're probably liberal hippies too. Gay ones.

 

[LordFisheh]

[
Because civil rights can go screw themselves, am I right?

First off, my friend, in case you haven't heard, USA has no official language.
English may be the de facto national language, but that is far from being the official language.

Secondly, how do you suppose one goes about taking away the citizenship of people that grown up in the USA and their children?
Deport them? To where I ask.
Just make them second class citizens? Deny them their civil rights?

Do remember that your country is founded on immigration.

A lot of the modern, left-wing, take on civil rights? Yes it can go screw itself to be honest.

Let me be blunt, the US is broke, and we saw this coming a long way off. It's great to say "hey, we'll take any poor person with a dream that wants a better life" but the simple truth is we can't afford that anymore, and when there are serious doubts about being able to pay people what they are owed through the social security system they paid into to begin with, the last thing we need to be doing is bring in MORE people to put a strain on the system. Right now my father is injured, he got hurt doing his job in The Department Of Corrections (he was a prison guard), The State Of Connecticut admit it owes him money, but won't pay him because it's broke and is involved in the govermental version of giving him an "IOU for when we can afford it". Needless to say this kind of thing renders me increasingly unsympathetic to immigrants coming into the country with the shirt on their
back and a dream.

As I see things, doing the unpleasant things now, gives us an increased chance of recovering, and being able to chill out again in the future. I understand the point of view that if we change now, we'll NEVER go back to this way of doing things (which I disagree with), but at the same time we're looking at a situation where if we continue on this path we won't have a country anything like it is now.

Also, my comments about immigration are just one aspect of the entire thing, not a single, overall solution to everything. If you read my posts, you might not agree with them, but you'll notice I'm pretty hardcore on a LOT of issues, that while not pleasant cumulatively amount to changes in policy that I feel will make a differance.

Basically, I'm a realist, simply put the US can't afford to be the huge group of nice guys we have been so far. We have obligations to the people that are already here... and trust me, at it's worst this is NOTHING compared to the simple fact that I think the US should be causing famines and mass starvation. One of the reasons why the US is in debt is that we give out all kinds of money and aid internationally to prop up other countries. When we can't keep our own house in order, charity is the first thing that needs to go. This means a lot of those countries are going to collapse, or be unable to feed their people, one of the big things the US produces is wheat... we're almost literally the breadbasket of the world, and we're pretty generous with it. Cut the aid, raise the prices on what we produce into more of an actual business, and take care of ourselves for a while. Of course in doing so we'll probably kill a billion people or so, but ones that are going to die anyway if the US falls since we won't be able to provide for them then either.

As far as things like English not being an official language, your correct only in the sense that we never formalized it, we probably should, if for no other reason than it helps to form a solid, verifiable standard for doing what we need to do. Truthfully we already have problems with internal strife caused by communication barriers that can be dealt with, and there are contreversies during elections and such with people being unable to understand the issues due to a lack of availible information, issues about things like newspapers in Chinatown and other location having a lot of misinformation that isn't noticed by the mono-lingual have been issues in the past and cause a problem with our system (which I won't go into right now).

When it comes to people who were born here, but don't fit in with society, well again we have trouble paying people who DO fit in with society, and have spent decades doing things for the people (like my father, working for the state, in a rather thankless job, and having increasing financial problems since the state simply can't pay him what it admit it owes after being injured and unable to work). As for where those people go, the answer is simply "anywhere but here". If they wind up dying, oh well. We're talking practicality here, not being nice. Personally I'd take one of the islands the US owns, dump them out there, tell the international community "this is our dumping ground, feel free to come and collect the people that don't work within our society", and then either another country adopts them or it doesn't. If nobody else wants to take them or can afford it, why should we?

Honestly though, don't get the wrong impression. I think in reality we'd wind up dumping very few people who were born here due to the presented oppertunities. I think once it was realized that we were serious you'd instead seeing a lot more cultural adaption, less people deciding that they want to be Chinese but draw American benefits and living in isolated communites, or deciding not to learn english even if they are born here to "make a point" and getting by in ethnically isolated communities. See, when you adapt a position of tolerance people don't even bother to try and fit in anymore, and instead push the limits of that tolerance.

As far as the benefits go, being able to communicate easily throughout the entire country would deal with a lot of problems.

In the end the issue of dumping people's citizenship would mostly affect people coming in as first generation immigrants. Those who have actually lived in the US will largely take advantage of the oppertunities already presented, doing things like learning english in school as opposed to blowing it off or deciding to not use it and letting the skills decay to the point where they might as well never have learned it.

In a practical sense the people born here that are going to be most affected are "anchor babies" but being babies and children they are just going to be going back to their parent's country, they generally have dual citizenship to begin with, in this case they would just be a citizen of the country the parents are from, rather than a US citizen as well.

So rather than take a look at the flaws and benefits of the current system, you simply blame the lot on immigrants and leave them to die until the US becomes sustainable? 50% of the world's military spending comes from you; why not cut back on that a little first? Especially as it's a frequent complaint that America is expected to deal with the world's problems - well if it didn't maintain military bases everywhere, that wouldn't be a problem would it?

Ultimately, the US is finally being called to account for its use of money. China wants its loans back, and so on. But instead of, at last, facing the responsibility, you want America to make others pay - again - for its failings by abandoning a segment of your population to die. But a subsection of that segment is isolationist, so it's okay. How would you take it, I wonder, if Uncle Sam had you shot tomorrow to save money? Would you feel okay and go peacefully to your death, because it was practical?

 

[Therumancer]

[
So rather than take a look at the flaws and benefits of the current system, you simply blame the lot on immigrants and leave them to die until the US becomes sustainable? 50% of the world's military spending comes from you; why not cut back on that a little first? Especially as it's a frequent complaint that America is expected to deal with the world's problems - well if it didn't maintain military bases everywhere, that wouldn't be a problem would it?

Ultimately, the US is finally being called to account for its use of money. China wants its loans back, and so on. But instead of, at last, facing the responsibility, you want America to make others pay - again - for its failings by abandoning a segment of your population to die. But a subsection of that segment is isolationist, so it's okay. How would you take it, I wonder, if Uncle Sam had you shot tomorrow to save money? Would you feel okay and go peacefully to your death, because it was practical?

Trust me, I have looked at the flaws and benefits of the current system, and have formed my opinion. It's just that they differ from yours, because in the end I'm not just going to shy away from something because it's going to negatively impact, or kill, people.

In the end you make it rather transparent that you want the US to fall from being the dominant world power, and I get that, your hardly alone.

Simply put our military spending is because military power is what makes us the dominant world power, and one of the reasons why all of these little economic games don't influance us more than they do already. Throughout history merchants and bureaucrats have always thought wars couldn't happen because of the flow of money, but that's never been the case. Hence the statement "Free Trade means he with the biggest guns trade freely". A lot of domestic liberals don't get it, but in the end one of the big reasons why we have such a huge military is that nobody can call us on our debts. International policing is just a side benefit of us being fairly nice guys.

As far as US financial irresponsibility, there is less truth to that than a lot of anti-US rhetoric would imply. Simply put a big part of the reason why we're in the shape that we're in is because of our morality, and not looking out for our own interests to the extent that we should. The US doesn't borrow money entirely because of it's own needs, but because of the way we prop up so much of the world. A lot of the money we borrow is borrowed so we can afford to give money and the few things we produce... like wheat, to other countries. We also agree to buy products at inflated prices, even halting our own domestic production, simply to prop up the economies of the producing nations.

It's also noteworthy that the US also doesn't press it's own interests into other nations when we need to. A good example would be China's "robber economy". Saying the US owes China money because they gave us money and we called it a loan, simplifies things. China HAS money because it does things like analyze and duplicate products owned by other countries and their corperations, and then sell knockoffs produced in their domestic sweatshops. Long ago we should have gone into China and started knocking heads (along with other nations victimized by this) but we're generally too nice to do it, and China's own military build up is intended to make this more difficult, not to mention allow them to invade other nations (which they go on about domestically if you pay attention). Taking "loans" from China was largely tribute in an attempt to stave off these kinds of issues from coming to a head, but really in the long term that was a bad idea, and we've gotten into a position where time definatly does favor The Chinese and the costs of an invasion to bring them to heal constantly rise due to their increasing military power. Not to mention the whole issue of them getting into a position to start launching invasions due to the way ICBMs are becoming increasingly obselete, and China is getting into a position where it can fully militarize, mobilize and deliver it's massive population.

Right now the US has actually been pretty nice to China, and we've sat down playing games with "the world court" when really we shouldn't have been. If your anti-US and like China because it's our big rival, then focusing on the part of the relationship that is "US Debt" plays into that, and of course a weaker US military would compound our economic problems by making it viable for nations like China to leverage us. If your not anti-US on the other hand you tend to look at China's sweatshops, and them thumbing their noses at things like patents, intellectual properties, and other things. China knocking off drugs like "Viagra" and then selling them without ever putting in the development cost are worth billions in revenues. The US isn't alone in this position, and plenty of countries have been affected, and one of the big issues the US faces is that we haven't really done much about it.

Technically China owes the US and other nations far more in penelties than it's loans imply, because the money it has loaned out was all stolen to begin with, and largely a diplomatic gesture. It knows this, we know this, and really most people do when they don't let the "OMG, I want to see the dominant world power go down" thing get the better of them.

Diplomatically one might wonder why the US and a lot of the world don't cut some kind of a deal to negate the "debt" in exchange for China abiding by international patent laws and such but not having to pay damages and restitution. The problem is that without those violations China has no real economy of note, it's largely dependant on it's sweatshops and knock off products. Any deal of this sort would ravage the Chinese economy and undo any of the progress it's faced.... which is also one of the reasons why we haven't pursued it for all these years, we put too much of a human face on a problem like this, and can't abide the cost of watching out for our own interests.

You might not like what I have to say, but well, there it is. This however has increasingly less to do with mail order brides and immigration. Immigration being largely a domestic matter that adjusting won't do much on it's own, but it would contribute to the solving a lot of our problems. I simply put rationality over emotion when things get to this point, and I think for a while we need to remove the "human factor" from the equasion and do what needs to be done even if it isn't nice. Largely because I think far more people will benefit than will suffer in the US through what I propose.

 

[MorgulMan]

I would be...cautious about it.

If it's just a glorified pen-pal dating service, with full consent on both sides, it's not morally objectionable to me. Obviously if the women are coerced, or practically sold into slavery, there's a big problem. If abuse is going on, that's a problem too.

As to the argument against it as a form of tricky immigration, that is ridiculous. So they're not doctors and engineers...they are coming into the country to form a family. The man is obviously well enough off to afford whatever the fee is. In all likelihood, they are not coming here to take jobs from hard working American citizens, or go on the welfare dole, or whatever other uncharitable fantasy you imagine for yourself. In all likelihood, they are coming to be a wife, and a mother, as a previous poster alluded. If you argue against them coming to the country, you are likely, like myself, of a politically/socially conservative mind. You should thus recognize that as possibly THE MOST IMPORTANT career there is.

 

[Esotera]

I think the idea is that marriages provide a more stable and concrete environment for raising children. It goes back to the whole "family-unit" argument.

Not too sure about this, I know several couples who've successfully raised children without being married, but it'd be interesting to see if offspring raised in a non-marital relationship were any worse off in terms of happiness/education. Whatever the result, it's definitely becoming more common; maybe less people see any need for marriage these days.

 

[Leon Last Lord Shyle]

I recently rewatched a documentary on this kind of thing (the difference being men where flown to Thailand and met the women there rather than having them "mailed" over)

Fair to say it did seem quite suspect a fair few of the men admitting that they prefered it because the Thai women where far more "biddable" than typical western women, obviously meaning that they did not like the idea of a wife that was independent and strong, also all the guys where kinda creepy.

The marriage's seemed to happen fast (a few days in some cases) and ended just a little bit slower for the most part and while a few may have found happiness I think for the most part it is the realm of the desperate, lonely and often misguided and the women are looking for an attempt to enter developed countries easily.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

I recently rewatched a documentary on this kind of thing (the difference being men where flown to Thailand and met the women there rather than having them "mailed" over)

Fair to say it did seem quite suspect a fair few of the men admitting that they prefered it because the Thai women where far more "biddable" than typical western women, obviously meaning that they did not like the idea of a wife that was independent and strong, also all the guys where kinda creepy.

The marriage's seemed to happen fast (a few days in some cases) and ended just a little bit slower for the most part and while a few may have found happiness I think for the most part it is the realm of the desperate, lonely and often misguided and the women are looking for an attempt to enter developed countries easily.

I see.
Just wondering, what was this documentary called?

 

[Uber Evil]

I think any sort of marriage is foul and detestable; the mail-order principle just adds a bit more questionability to the whole affair. In short, I find the whole thing objectionable, but moreso because of the marriage bit than the mail-order bit.

If you're being serious and not facetious, might I ask why you feel that way about marriage?

I feel a similar way, although nowhere near as strongly. Basically the idea that two people need to assert their love for each other through what is usually an elaborate & expensive ceremony, and receive tax breaks for it, has never made sense to me. Also it locks couples in a relationship; is it worse breaking up with someone, or getting a divorce? There's still a big social stigma around divorce in some parts. Also a fair percentage of marriages are arranged, which is a bit dodgy...

If people sincerely want to do it though, then they should be allowed to.

Esotera addresses part of my problem with marriage: That it is an expensive, elaborate ceremony that leads to tax breaks effectively makes me think of it as a scam straight off, either working for the couple in question (through the tax breaks) or for lawyers (through the divorce proceedings). That's combined with the fact that I've rarely seen a marriage go well, and I remember the acrimony between my parents well enough to be wary of getting married. The laws in Ireland make it especially difficult and intolerable from a legal perspective to get married; once in wedlock, one has to go through several years of separation in order to be eligible to get divorced. This is a holdover from the Catholic Church's hold on Irish politics, and the traditional connection between religion and marriage fills me with further distaste, as I am myself an atheist.

My main problem, however, is that marriage just consumes me with a deep and bitter envy. I am not romantically successful. I have never had any sort of romantic interaction whatsoever. Women quite simply do not find me attractive. No woman will ever love me. This is embittering in its own right. The idea of marriage makes it worse, as it represents a trust between two people of a magnitude that I will never be able to feel for a woman. Whether this trust is warranted or not (and most often, it isn't) is irrelevant. It's the fact that these ceremonies rub into my face something that I will never be able to attain, to my deep sadness. If I were ever to engage in a romantic relationship, something which is looking ever less likely by the day, I would be constantly looking over my shoulder, expecting the day when the woman reveals that she's been playing me for a cuckold. That two people could trust each other enough to engage in a legally binding ceremony that in effect shouts out that trust seals my hatred of marriage.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm an idealist, so I believe that eventually everyone will find someone if they are looking for someone, but you have your opinions, and are totally right to feel that way. I hope wherever life takes you, marriage or not, is as good as you can get it.
OT: As long as no one is hurt during the marriage, I feel that people should be able to do what they please with their lives.