Saturday, January 06, 2007
Love's Labours Lost
This site, http://www.marriage-4u.com/services.php?page=backgroundchecks, is the home page of a "detective agency" of sorts that provides background checks and other identity verification services for men who are interested in Russian mail-order brides. Let me state that I am not in the market for a Russian bride. I came across it serendipitously, from a random ad that appeared when I was in Gmail. I swear. Anyway, the site starts by warning prospective clients that many Russian "brides" are in fact men, and has a funny picture of what you (the seeker of a Russian bride) might be getting yourself in for. I tell you, it's something to see.
The range of services that these detectives offer is quite extensive: For as little as $24 you can get a telephone "scam consultation." If your prospective darling has sent you a copy of her passport, the Russian Paul Drakes will verify its authenticity for $60. If you've received a photo and an address from your bride-to-be, the detectives will validate them for $107. For $66 they will deliver your loved one a rose and, in the process, snap a surreptitious photo which they will send to you (honestly, that struck me as being a little past the pale). And, for a mere $295, the gumshoes will rat out any existing boyfriends, children, or scummy family members that your blushing beauty may have forgotten to mention to you.
It took me a few minutes, but I guess I resigned myself to the fact that if we have a need for foreign mail-order brides (if ), then we have a need for a service like this, given that the industry is permeated with fraud. But then I went on to read that this very Russian detective agency runs its own marriage-for-sale agency at http://www.marriage-4u.com. Which got me to wondering... will the detectives tell you that your prospective bride from a competing agency is a con artist, just to steer you to their own agency instead? How can you trust them? And how will you know if their prospective bride, that they set you up with, isn't a con artist? Who will you hire to investigate her? Who detects the detectives?
My head started to swim. I could see that once love is infected by suspicion it spreads like flesh-eating disease until there's nothing left but rot and decay. Every Russian mail-order bride is, for me, forevermore, tainted by the scent of the underarms of that guy pictured in the wedding gown on the detectives' web page.
Sigh.
Whatever happened to the neighborhood matchmakers of our youth? Would it be "so nice to have you back where you belong," Dolly?
I think I'm just going to stop clicking on Google ads.
Labels: Musing
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Strange as it may sound, one of our residents married a mail-order bride from Russia. They seem happy, and her english is improving. Go figure.
interesting...
if a guy posing as a woman (as opposed to someone who is transsexual and was born male but had surgery and hormones and now lives as a woman) tried to get into the states on a male passport for a fiance visa, they'd send him packing pretty quickly.
i have some ftm (female to male) transsexual friends and they had to show proof of surgery, and of living as men, before they could get their passports as guys.
plus, as i realized when i was with a kiwi for 10+ years, the US government is NOT amenable to any kind of immigration for same sex unions, which is what this would look like to them.
so, i'd say one's chances of getting a boy bride would be pretty slim, although i don't know about the transsexual mail order bride numbers! and that's not to say a genetic woman couldn't be a bit shady and not what she represented.
still, very creepy that they spy. and creepy that there's a need for it...
if a guy posing as a woman (as opposed to someone who is transsexual and was born male but had surgery and hormones and now lives as a woman) tried to get into the states on a male passport for a fiance visa, they'd send him packing pretty quickly.
i have some ftm (female to male) transsexual friends and they had to show proof of surgery, and of living as men, before they could get their passports as guys.
plus, as i realized when i was with a kiwi for 10+ years, the US government is NOT amenable to any kind of immigration for same sex unions, which is what this would look like to them.
so, i'd say one's chances of getting a boy bride would be pretty slim, although i don't know about the transsexual mail order bride numbers! and that's not to say a genetic woman couldn't be a bit shady and not what she represented.
still, very creepy that they spy. and creepy that there's a need for it...
I guess that when same-sex unions finally have "all the rights" of marriage, that will include the right to import spouses, but given that visas are issued by the Federal government, we'll have to wait for Federal approval of same-sex unions, and that probably won't happen until practically all the states have taken the step first.
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