From Russia With Love

This one begins with an anecdote. Recently, a friend of mine was at work in the break room. Another employee is on the phone in the break room, and overheard snippets of conversation. These snippets followed this general line. "Yes, she was supposed to be in London this morning, and flown over to Fort Wayne today at 1:30.....yes I have arranged for transport.....yes....YES, I paid for the ticket! My name is [redacted], card number [also redacted]! She's pulled this before, but I'm going to get her through this time!"
     The average mind at this point will go for the conclusion "haha, it sounds like he's ordering a mail order bride! But no one does that these days....right?" Being in possession of an average mind, these were my words  in response to this story. So I relate it to my friends, and in the retelling, a small light bulb blazes its way into existence, battling its way through the flotsam in my brain to ask its nagging question.

'Is it possible?'
I decided to investigate.
I started in the simplest way possible...I went to Google (sorry, Bing) and typed in mail-oh hello, the smart response system Google implements to guess your search has 'mail order brides' as the third most likely search. Eyes widening, I went on a tour of the web's vast knowledge banks, and found out some crazy things.
1: They're not all from Russia.
The mail order bride system is based around women who post their details in a way so that people from more developed countries can see it (magazine or internet), arrange for marriage with a willing partner and thus be set up for life with some lucky guy who can then parade around his "exotic" wife. Marriage maybe for the wrong reasons, but I'm not in the business of judging. Anyway, these brides can come from anywhere. The stereotypical source is Russia, but also Belarus, Ukraine, China, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan and Colombia are only some of the countries that also supply this market. Motivations usually come down to one thing; financial security.

2: This is really old.
Apparently this has been going on since the 1800's in the U.S. Frontiersmen would get out west, stake their claim, build a house....then get lonely. So through an elaborate pen pal system in which pictures would be sent back to the guys (pre phone sexting, good lord) and courtship letters sent back East, women would agree to marry guys they had never met or seen. In the age of E-Harmony and match.com, I find it harder to laugh at that idea. Nothing is new under the sun.

3: They stay together.
According to USCIS, fully 80% of the marriages that started in this way stayed intact as long as they were being monitored, with an estimated 4000-6000 marriages happening per year. PER YEAR. That's wild.

So after reading all of this, I wonder about the kinds of guys who are doing this. Are these just guys who don't want to go through dating, holding hands, long walks on the beach.....just skip straight to the altar? Are they hoping that they will avoid drama by picking up a woman from a country with a history of subservient spouses? Whatever the reason, and with apologies to the guys doing it for the right reason, a lot of these guys are terrible, and can only get a woman with the promise of money and a house in the U.S. I'm willing to bet that a lot of them see it as some kind of sex slave catalog for 'exotic chicks'.

Which brings me back to the incredulity of my initial reaction. This still happens? You can compare it to internet dating, but it's generally understood that there is the matter of citizenship status and financial burden to factor in. Also.....a lot of the women doing this are trying to get to the U.S. Funny, in a time when so many citizens want to get out.

Finally, in case someone wants to make the point, I'll do it myself. I, as a foreigner, married an American woman. Does that make me equivalent to a mail order husband?
Something to think about tonight...as well as if that woman ever caught her flight.