Speech #1090099671

The IMB industry has exploded in recent years. greatly facilitated by the Internet. According to statistics from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. an estimated onethird to onehalf of all foreign fianc~es admitted to the U.S. each year9.500 to 14.500 women in 2004 aloneand many thousand more admitted foreign wives. have met their American husbands through IMBs. The number of foreign flanc~es admitted to the U.S. more than doubled between 1998 and 2002. and continues to climb. Second. the industry bears significant responsibility for womens vulnerability to abuse. and has done little if anything on its own initiative to safeguard them. Over a halfdecade ago. the thenImmigration and Naturalization Service concluded in a report to Congress that. "with the burgeoning number of unregulated international matchmaking organizations and clients using their services. the potential for abuse in mailorder marriages is considerable." The INS study further noted that American men who use IMBs tend to seek relationships with women whom they feel they can control. Moreover. the marketing and business practices of IMBs also heighten the risk of abuse by feeding this perception. Agencies often advertise the women they recruit as being submissive to male clients. who might pay up to several thousand dollars to gain access to those women.