Met through marriage agency many years ago, disclose?

[jft 12]

I met my fiance over a decade ago though a marriage agency that is no longer in business (or at least no longer arranges marriages). However we lost contact for over a decade and reconnected this year via Facebook. Is our original meeting through the agency relevant now? Is there a way I could enquire beforehand about this topic? I have managed to contact the original owner of the agency who is willing to help but I'd rather not go down that path if I don't have to.

[JimVaPhuong 4,864]

I met my fiance over a decade ago though a marriage agency that is no longer in business (or at least no longer arranges marriages). However we lost contact for over a decade and reconnected this year via Facebook. Is our original meeting through the agency relevant now? Is there a way I could enquire beforehand about this topic? I have managed to contact the original owner of the agency who is willing to help but I'd rather not go down that path if I don't have to.

Read the I-129F instructions, page 1, step 2, "Compliance with the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA)." They describe in that section what constitutes an International Marriage Broker according to the law. If the agency that introduced you qualifies as an IMB according to that definition then you're supposed to disclose that in your response to question 19 on the form.

This is where it gets tricky...

The IMBRA was part of the VAWA re-authorization of 2005. It sounds like that was long after you were originally introduced. Why does this matter? Because the IMBRA imposes some disclosure requirements on the International Marriage Broker. The reason they want to know if you were introduced through an IMB is to determine if the IMB complied with the law. Even if the agency you used qualifies as an IMB according to the definition in the Act, it would have been impossible for them to comply with a law that didn't exist yet. So, technically, if the agency is (or was) an IMB then you have to declare it, but they're not going to be able to do the compliance check they would normally do because of when you were introduced, not to mention that the agency doesn't exist anymore.

According to the definition in the law, an IMB is an entity that exists primarily to provide dating services between US citizens or LPR's and foreigners. If the agency provided the same services to people other than US citizens, and charged the same rates to it's customers regardless of the country they were from, then they're not an IMB under the law. Even if the agency exists solely to hook up people from a specific country (Russia for example), they're not an IMB as long as they provide equivalent services to people from any other country, and aren't specifically focused on hooking up foreigners with US citizens or LPR's. The overwhelming majority of internet dating sites are not considered IMB's because they are open to people from any country, and not specifically US citizens or LPR's. In fact, most sites accept members from any country specifically so that they WON'T be considered IMB's under US law. That's because most of them don't comply with the disclosure requirements the IMBRA imposes.

In other words, they'd allow some guy from a 3rd world craphole sign up to the site, but the odds of a Russian girl giving him the time of day would be pretty slim.

[baron555 934]

I met my fiance over a decade ago though a marriage agency that is no longer in business (or at least no longer arranges marriages). However we lost contact for over a decade and reconnected this year via Facebook. Is our original meeting through the agency relevant now? Is there a way I could enquire beforehand about this topic? I have managed to contact the original owner of the agency who is willing to help but I'd rather not go down that path if I don't have to.

Doesn't really matter. List them on the form; your fiance might be asked about it at the interview but it's really not relevant.

[jft 12]

This agency primarily offered it's services to Americans but I know that there were many British men (and likely others too but my memory isn't that good) that used the service too. However the agency only offered Russian women the chance to meet foreign men, it wasn't open to everyone (no Russian men were introduced to foreign women for example). So does that qualify as an IMB then? BTW the agency has not offered matchmaking of any sort since mid-2004 so it was most definitely not in business when the IMBRA took affect.

So given all this do I need to check the IMB box and pass on the information on how to contact the owner and let them figure out what to do in this case? Or do I just mention it in the "how did we meet" section and leave the IMB section blank? I'm ok with filling out the IMB section but I am concerned that my unique situation could slow down the process.