Washington Examiner reporter Alan Suderman says "Maryland lawmakers are pushing for tighter regulations on the mail-order bride industry."
There is no question Maryland can write more regulations. But can regulation solve market failure?
Suderman says three dozen Maryland House members want to "close the loopholes in current federal law and alert would-be foreign brides, who often come from poorer countries, of the criminal history of their suitors." The market failure they want to solve is that prospective brides lack full information about potential suitors, and while a federal law was enacted in 2005 to solve the market failure, it didn't: the law only requires self-disclosure of criminal records, which admittedly seems unlikely to do much. To close this "loophole," the bill would require agencies in the mail-order bride business to conduct background checks instead of relying on self-certification.
Suderman quotes one agency owner who points out, correctly, that incomplete information cuts both ways. While it is true that prospective brides lack sufficient information about their suitors, prospective husbands also lack sufficient information about prospective brides. Some are primarily motivated by the prospect of securing a Green Card and future citizenship. Encounters International owner Natasha Spivack says federal law "allows foreign-born brides to more easily obtain green cards by falsely accusing their husbands of abuse." The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (Title VIII, Subtitle D of the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-162) does not include a parallel provision requiring the disclosure of relevant information about prospective brides. Indeed, Title VIII Subtitle A has extensive provisions that incentivize false claims.
By requiring agents to perform background checks, Maryland legislators would lead some prospective brides not to accept offers from suitors with criminal records. It also might lead agents to leave the state and set up shop elsewhere, thus shifting the location of the market failure but not reducing it. The new regulations would offer no help to honest prospective suitors.
Meanwhile, Natasha Spivack defends her business by noting that "few of her clients have criminal records and many of them are government officials." Suderman does not report the size of the union of these two sets.
International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005:
Background Information on Prospective Suitors
Section 833(d)(2)(B) (search for p. 113 at the top): Background Information.--The international marriage broker shall collect a certification signed (in written, electronic, or other form) by the United States client accompanied by documentation or an attestation of the following background information about the United States client:
(i) Any temporary or permanent civil protection order or restraining order issued against the United States client.
(ii) Any Federal, State, or local arrest or conviction of the United States client for homicide, murder, man- slaughter, assault, battery, domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, abusive sexual contact, sexual exploitation, incest, child abuse or neglect, torture, trafficking, peonage, holding hostage, involuntary servitude, slave trade, kidnapping, abduction, unlawful criminal restraint, false imprisonment, or stalking.
(iii) Any Federal, State, or local arrest or conviction of the United States client for—
(I) solely, principally, or incidentally engaging in prostitution;
(II) a direct or indirect attempt to procure prostitutes or persons for the purpose of prostitution; or
(III) receiving, in whole or in part, of the pro- ceeds of prostitution.
(iv) Any Federal, State, or local arrest or conviction of the United States client for offenses related to controlled substances or alcohol.
(v) Marital history of the United States client, including whether the client is currently married, whether the client has previously been married and how many times, how previous marriages of the client were terminated and the date of termination, and whether the client has previously sponsored an alien to whom the client was engaged or married.
(vi) The ages of any of the United States client’s children who are under the age of 18.
(vii) All States and countries in which the United States client has resided since the client was 18 years of age.
From Tristan Laurent on 17 January 2010, 12:00
This website states that it was created as an "independent source of reliable information about subjects related to federal regulation." In choosing to analyze IMBRA in the context of the proposed MD fingerprinting law, it has its work cut out for it.
First, it should not call foreign women who visit dating websites "mail-order brides". This is a demeaning and insulting label for a woman who chooses to meet men by internet. But of course, the users of this phrase never apply it to American women who go online to meet men; they only reserve it for foreign women. Nor do they call men - regardless of their country of origin - mail-order grooms. Anthropologist Nicole Constable says of this in her book "Romance on a Global Stage": "Women may quite literally put their best face forward, but the market metaphor [that women are being sold] should not be taken literally in this context. Would this metaphor be applied to western women and men who use dating services or place personal ads, or does it reflect more pejorative assumptions about foreign or Third World women?" No one who ever meets my wife, an engineer and international businesswoman who immigrated to the United States with a six-figure bank account would ever dare to call her that to her face. But for some reason they do it in public.
Constable also writes: "Assuming that Asian women are objects who are bought and sold...is not only a bad feminist argument, but it is one that fits with the most demeaning and essentializing images of mail order brides. Such images rob women of their ability to express intelligence, resistance, creativity, independence, dignity and strength."
Second, it makes no sense to call a "market failure" the fact that foreign women lack information about American men with whom they may communicate. This could be "regulatory failure", but there is no marketplace issue here as neither internet companies that allowed men and women to post profiles nor the foreign women were seeking this information before IMBRA. It is only feminist groups that insist these women must have this information and the federal government which complied in creating IMBRA. This has nothing to do with the marketplace but only with regulation of social behavior.
Third, this website states above: "By requiring agents to perform background checks, Maryland legislators would lead some prospective brides not to accept offers from suitors with criminal records." Offers of what? Marriage? Does the author of this website know how internet dating works where someone posts a profile and another person says hello, how are you, you are interesting, you are attractive, what is it like to live in (take your pick): the west side of town, the next town, the next state, another country? This law might prevent that sort of communication from occuring, unlike any other sort of meeting. The law has no effect on a criminal meeting a foreign women in her country, or if she travels to the US, or they both meet in a third country, or any other way of meeting. Moreover, the law even requires arrest records to be disclosed, so if the three Duke University boys falsely accused of rape ever want to meet a foreign woman online, they should not bother to try.
Analyzing these laws this way is like analyzing the Emperor's New Clothes as a bit extravagent, or not extravagent enough, or too bulky, or not bulky enough. It took a child to say "But he isn't wearing anything at all." IMBRA and the proposed MD law are ridiculous and unworthy of a democracy that values liberty, privacy and individual rights.