Thanks to Senator Cantwell’s artful dissembling and Senator Brownback’s white-horse chivalry, American men are presumed to be a threat to foreign women.
Want a textbook example how the Left manufactures a crisis, passes a law that rolls back Constitutional protections, snookers card-carrying conservatives, and bilks American taxpayers? Look no farther than IMBRA, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act.
A little background: It’s no secret that conditions in post-socialist Russia are grim. Author Sonya Luehrmann recounts how women desperately search to find a husband “to put one’s personal life in order, to settle down with a stable family.”
And here in the United States, some men find American ladies to be a little too, shall we say, high-maintenance for their tastes.
Before long over 200 match-making services around the world had sprouted up like a clutch of springtime tulips.
A few years ago University of Pittsburgh professor Nicole Constable set out to probe the inner workings of these dating agencies. In her book Romance on a Global Stage, Constable revealed the international match-makers were simply responding to a human need for companionship and love. Many men who marry foreign brides “went to great lengths to ensure their partner’s comfort and happiness in the United States,” she noted.
But feminists are rankled by any hint that their nostrum for female liberation may be curtailing American women’s marriage prospects. Worse, some of these foreign women actually aspire to be mothers and homemakers. Imagine that!
So the Sourpuss Sisters conspired to put the kibosh on the operation. They knew convincing Congress to regulate romance would be a hard sell. So they resorted to their tried and true formula of hackneyed stereotypes, outright demagoguery, and appeals to male chivalry.
It was Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington who quarterbacked the legislative strategy. First she brandished the notion of “mail-order brides,” casting foreign women as victims of predatory males. Then she dubbed international dating services as “marriage brokers,” conjuring up the image of a rogue operation trading lives for dollars.
On July 13, 2004, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled a hearing to air the issue. No dating services or happily-betrothed foreign women were invited to testify — their comments would not likely fit the script.
During her testimony, Cantwell made the startling claim that match-making services serve as a nefarious front for international human trafficking. She concluded, “there is a growing epidemic of domestic abuse among couples who meet via international marriage brokers.” As proof of that “epidemic,” she highlighted the cases of three abused women.
Cantwell’s depiction of comely maidens being seduced into prostitution rings was more than Sen. Sam Brownback could resist, and before long he signed on as a leading co-sponsor of the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act. With liberals and conservatives now on board, IMBRA’s political star was rising.
But it turns out that Senator Cantwell’s supposition that dating services drag women into a life of sex slavery and indentured servitude was nothing more than a feminist tall-tale.
There was the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service report that revealed, “less than 1 percent of the abuse cases now being brought to the attention of the INS can be attributed to the mail-order bride industry.”
A second analysis soberly concluded that foreign brides are “dramatically less likely to be involved in domestic violence as calculated by the Intimate Partner Murder Rate.”
And last week the Washington Post reported that early estimates of up to 100,000 human trafficking victims being secreted into the United States each year were grossly exaggerated. Despite more than $150 million of taxpayer dollars diverted to a massive search and rescue effort, it turns out the actual number of trafficking victims is closer to 200 annually.
But in the politically-correct atmosphere that envelopes Washington these days, agendas count for more than the truth.
So after the gavel fell on the Senate hearing, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act was bundled into the Violence Against Women Act. That law was signed into law on January 5, 2006. A few days later, Fox News columnist Wendy McElroy castigated the act as branding all American men as “abusers.”
Now, any man who wishes to go through an international dating company must submit to an extensive background check. That’s right, guys, get ready to tell them about your arrests, criminal history, restraining orders, how many times you’ve been married, and even how many children you have. For good measure, don’t forget the sex offender registry check.
So thanks to Senator Cantwell’s artful dissembling and Senator Brownback’s white-horse chivalry, men are presumed to be a threat to foreign women. And Cupid’s arrow now falls under the watchful eyes of green-visored bureaucrats.
careyroberts@comcast.net
Read more articles by Carey Roberts
Ok, maybe I'm just missing it, but how does Brownback fit in?
- martin.musculus
Comment by martin.musculus | October 2, 2007
This author contends American men are presumed to be a threat to foreign women, but in our dysfunctional culture American men are a presumed threat to all women and white American men are a presumed threat to everyone. This point was driven home in an unexpected way by a television program.
A while back, I read an author (name forgotten) who claimed that if you wanted to know which groups controlled the political arena, it was merely necessary to determine which groups were allowed to complain. At first, this statement seemed both nonsensical and intuitively obvious – isn’t everyone in America allowed to complain and isn’t everyone constantly complaining?
But, the author’s meaning was that those groups who complain, and are listened to, are, in fact, the real controllers of the government and our political culture. This made more sense since all minority groups feel entitled to complain and expect their complaints to be respectfully listened to, if not actually acted upon. Alternatively, how many white guys can complain over how they’re treated and actually expect their complaints to be taken seriously?
What drove the point home to me is a nightly television drama called “Law and Order”. For those not familiar with the series (and I had never watched the prime time episodes), the show is a cops and robbers drama melded with a courtroom drama during each hourly episode. Every episode starts out with someone discovering a freshly committed murder or a murder actually taking place (hence, in our household, it’s referred to as “the nightly murder”). The first half hour of the show is turned over to the New York City homicide detectives who discover who the murderer is and arrest the perpetrator. The second half hour is the dramatic trial sequence where guilt or innocence is determined.
The senior, Assistant District Attorney is played by Sam Waterston and his junior assistants are an ever changing bevy of beautiful and brilliant female attorneys. The voter-elected District Attorney for New York County, as portrayed by various actors over the years, makes brief appearances during each show; even Fred Thompson, the Republican presidential candidate has been featured as the D.A..
Reruns of the original shows come on nightly at 6 within our television market and make for interesting entertainment during dinner and the cocktail hour. But, after watching the show off and on for several weeks, a few things became apparent. First, and very amazing, 90% of all murders in New York City are committed by white guys. And, even more amazing, at least half of these guys are well-to-do, even wealthy. For a city with a large minority population, the propensity of white guys to commit the most horrendous and disgusting murders is truly alarming. At first, I thought I was just catching the “white guy did it” through coincidence since we didn’t watch every evening. But, that theory was soon debunked as I watched more shows.
Having grown up in Detroit, it was amusing to imagine how my African-American friends would react to the idea that white guys commit 90% of all murders – probably consider the idea both hilarious and ridiculous. The occasional minority does commit murder on the show, but generally for understandable and even noble reasons. For example, one Hispanic man killed a health insurance administrator because the guy wouldn’t approve a life saving medical treatment for his daughter (he was convicted).
So, for fun, I started keeping track of the guilty to see if “the white guy did it” held constant and always for the basest and most venal reasons. Sure enough, the numbers tracked true to the theory. Minorities murder out of necessity or murder because they have a tough, even dismal life. Most murders committed by a minority, although rarely depicted on the show, and excluding those murders falling within the noble purpose category, were straightforward one on one shootings over money, drugs or women, but not so for the white guys. There was an obvious and consistent lack of noble reasons for their crimes. In fact, white guys murder everyone only for money, jealousy, money, revenge, money or, not to forget to mention, out and out deviancy or sexual perversion.
Women in general and wives in particular are frequent victims, although white guys are also prone to a virulent racism and the vilest forms of intolerance to any minority. White guys are also extremely prone to mental illness, psychosis of various sorts and generally nuttiness – at least more so than women or any minority group member.
Women on the show murder also, but usually for understandable reasons and their motives are invariably portrayed in a sympathetic light. Generally, the husband (the white guy, you guessed it) was cheating or had treated them badly. One woman murdered her ex husband’s new wife and at the end of the trial she was found guilty. But, the closing shot portrayed the husband sitting with his head in his hands – his actions in leaving his first wife had set off a chain of disastrous events worthy of Shakespeare. He lost his new wife, his ex-wife faced life imprisonment and his children by his ex-wife were left without their mother – and the camera left no one in doubt as to who was to blame.
My wife finds it amusing that I can usually guess early in the show which of several suspects will turn out to be the murderer – it’s easy, I just pick the white guy and the most obnoxious one if several white guys are suspected. But, I find it ironic that our culture would accept such trite nonsense as realistic enough to be entertaining. Obviously, New York City hasn’t cornered the market on homicidal white guys, but you couldn’t tell it from this show.
Nor would the show get away with constantly portraying black or Asian guys as murderers, perverts, rapists, drug peddlers, psychos or egotistical jerks. But, interestingly, this show can and does get away with portraying white guys as just that. And, who’s going to complain about that – the white guys? And, who would care if they should complain?
Adding to the subtle psychological message, it’s also necessary to look at the “good” guys. The wise, black, female police lieutenant has the personal integrity of a Supreme Court justice. The pair of homicide detectives on the show must always include at least one minority or woman. But, the most interesting dynamic is the one between the senior Assistant D.A. and his beautiful junior assistant. Lacking any sexual spark, this relationship is meant to portray a white, male-female duality.
The female junior assistant can be expected to sympathize with those who commit murder for noble reasons and she consistently strives to emphasize how society’s inequities can drive minorities and women to occasionally murder. Not so the senior Assistant DA. This character is driven by a stern and unrelenting commitment to justice and punishing the guilty regardless of motive. So, which of the two must make the hard and sometimes questionable decision to prosecute the minority or woman who committed murder – the senior Assistant DA does – and, of course, the senior Assistant DA is a white guy.
Why do societies need to single out a group to despise? Who knows? And, why are Americans comfortable with despising only white guys – the one group who supposedly controls our society? Another good question. But, it isn’t hard to see why American men shouldn’t be trusted to pick brides from foreign countries, particularly white American men. Our most popular entertainment successfully portrays American men as either bumbling dimwits or brutal murderers – so why should real life be different?
Of course, maybe there’s some truth hidden within this bog of cultural prejudice. The writers and producers of Law & Order are, you guessed it, white guys. So, true to form, these white guys are willing to slander and demean other white guys solely for money. Perhaps our culture is right to despise them after all.
Comment by Pat Skurka | October 4, 2007