Speech #1090100853

I want to provide important background information about the reasoning behind The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (IMBRA) that is included in this VAWA 2000 legislation. The final IMRBA legislation combines provisions that created a significant role for the government in information collection and distribution to foreign fiancees and spouses with regulation of the International Marriage Broker Industry. IMBRA has been designed to address concems about U.S. citizen abusers who use the K visa process to petition for aliens outside the United States and abuse them. This Act. establishes the first meaningful federal regulations on international marriage broker agencies (IMBs). companies jn the business of matching mostly American male clients to foreign women who will join them in the United States as fiances or spouses. There have been numerous cases of foreign women who were matched with American men. came to the U.S. live with their new spouses and were subjected to domestic violence. sexual assault or other forms of extreme cruelty. In some cases. the perpetrators have successfully used IMBs and the immigration system to bring in a series of fianc6s or spouses who have all suffered from domestic violence from the American sponsor and client. This bill is designed to inform foreign spouses and fiancees entering the United States of the laws relating to such abusive crimes. and the availability of help. In addition. it seeks to prevent abusers from using the immigration system to find new victims. Sections 832. 833 and 834 are designed to prevent further abuse by instituting measures to distribute information that can help the K visa recipients learn about domestic violence protections available to them in the United States. These sections also provide them with specific information about their U.S. citizen petitioners criminal conviction history. Additionally. this section limits the ability of abusive U.S. citizens to repeatedly petition for K visas for aliens outside the U.S. A consular officer may not approve a fiancee visa petition without verifying that the petitioner has not previously petitioned for two or more aliens applying for spousa or fiancee K visas. If the petitioner has had such a petition previously approved. the consular officer must verify that two years have elapsed since the filing of the previous petition. The Secretary of Homeland Security may grant waivers of the twoyear waiting period or the limit on filing more. than two petitions. The waivers included here were designed to give DHS the discretion to waive both the time and number limitations when K fiance visa applications are filed by nonabusive U.S. citizens. Such waivers may be appropriate. for example. for nonabusive U.S. citizens who live abroad or were raised abroad and may be more likely to marry foreign spouses. or in cases of unusual circumstances. such as the sudden death of an alien approved for a prior K visa. Section 832(a) includes a domestic violence victim waiver modeled after the waiver created for immigrant victims of domestic violence by VAWA 2000 (INA Section 237(a)(7)). Waivers shall be granted when tbe U.S. citizen petitioner demonstrates that they have been subjected to battering or extreme cruelty. that there was a connection between the criminal conviction and the abuse. including efforts to escape the abuse and that they were not the primary perpetrator of abuse in the relationship. Section 832(a)(2) of VAWA 2005 requires that U.S. citizen petitioners filing K visa applications for spouses they married abroad provide under oath the same criminal information required for K fiance visa petitioners. This section also creates a database to track serial K applications. Upon approval of a second K visa for a spouse or fiance the U.S. citizen petitioner will be entered into the multiple visa tracking database and will be notified that this petition and all future petitions will be entered into the database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. Once two espousal or fianc6 K visas have been approved. for each subsequent petition filed. DHS will notify both tbe citizen petitioner and foreignborn spouse about the number of previously filed petitions in the database for a 10year period. All future K applications will trigger similar notice.