tigretigre

We're on our way, gang! Just about every desk slave in America has CNN.com bookmarked.

Not that I'd have any firsthand knowledge...

I'd be careful of anything from that website, noBS...there is definitely some kind of anti-IMBRA agenda going on over there, and it's possible stuff is being exaggerated for the purpose inducing panic and anger.

The place where I met my fiance is one of the millions of totally free IRC channels out there, on just about every subject in the world, operated by everyone from obsessed Twin Peaks fans from Japan to home-brewing enthusiasts in Nebraska. Some people log on with their real names, while others call themselves poop_addict73 and claim to be from Antarctica. I should be okay unless the DHS wants to claim that the entire Internet is one big matchmaking service and that all our ISPs are marriage brokers.

Mephys, I almost peed my pants laughing...what a great story!

Out of curiosity, how broad IS their definition of "marriage broker"--the original poster appears to be suggesting that anybody who met their fiance online will be considered to have used a marriage broker.

I met my fiance in a support chat for people recovering from a particular illness. Not only was there no intent on the part of the site administrator to facilitate meetings between users, but the chat guidelines discouraged people from using the site with that intent. Do you really suppose my fiance and I met through the services of a marriage broker as defined by IMBRA?

How about my grandma's online bridge club? Marriage broker?

My dad belongs to a Cleveland Indians fan forum. Marriage broker?

I belong to a sewing pattern review mailing list. Marriage broker?

Something in my gut tells me that no, people who met in a chat about equestrian sports or on an indie rock forum will not be thought by the consular officers to have used a marriage broker.

Your point is well-taken, but I would be careful about making mountains out of molehills. It's awfully easy to trigger widespread panic here.

These people always thinking about laws and laws. VAWA should be named the Retarded Woman's Act (RWA) *laugh* As a group of 80 - 90 year-old ladies playing cards told me - who are these stupid females getting themselves into such situations and not walking or running away? They have no excuse if they can walk or crawl - what they are invalids? *laugh*

Ah, the old "I didn't stab him, he ran into my knife 16 times" argument.

Man of Action, in addition to being one of the most barbarouly ignorant people I've encountered on the Internet (and that is saying a lot), is pretty clue-free when it comes to the etiquette standards observed on this board. As I am only a "stupid female"/"retarded woman", Man of Action isn't likely to accept any statement of mine concerning the acceptability of his offensive comments here. Therefore, if there is any male here willing to do so, I humbly request that he explain to Man of Action exactly where and how his posts fail to meet our basic standards of acceptable forum behavior.

Thank you.

Man of Action, do you make this stuff up as you type your posts, or do you decide ahead of time which absurdities you're going to propound?

The immigration reform package originated in the House, and the House and Senate still have a lot of work to do in order to come up with a compromise. There is no "amnesty," and there is certainly no "amnesty application" that is about to swamp the Service Centers and butt our petitions out of the line.

You are obviously tossing as many "buzz issues" as you can into your posts in order to get people riled, to what purpose I do not know. Personally, Hillary Clinton and feminists and Mexicans hold no fear for me, so please take your offensive rhetoric and bizarre theories elsewhere.

I mean, really now.

Who cares about protecting anyone? I'm just a pinko who never met an industry she didn't want to regulate!!!!

Laws may discriminate on the basis of sex in certain cases...see my post in the Repeal IMBRA thread, where I explain it--my fingers are tired.

The usaimmigrationattorney link posted is a link to an immigration lawyer's blog. This particular lawyer definitely has an agenda, and many of the posted comments are of the Men's Rights bent and pretty harsh.

(Am I against men's rights? Of course not. Everyone's gotta have rights. The self-styled Men's Rights Activists, however, have a pretty strong male supremacy slant. I can spot them right off, they have the worst spelling I've ever seen.)

If we're gonna chase rumors, I'd rather stick to the ones on VJ...at least here we're all concerned for each other and not for some gender politics agenda.

And my epidermis is showing...

Do I think IMBRA is unfair? Well, my petition is being held up, and my criminal and marital history will be shared with my fiance during this process...and I'm female. So of course it's unfair! I'm kidding...kidding.

But as an American female I don't use IMBs--only men do, so that's disparate impact, right? Well, laws that discriminate based on gender are considered to pass constitutional muster if they serve an important government purpose and are narrowly tailored to serve that purpose.

Apparently this was considered narrowly tailored enough? Personally, I think they could do better.

I do think it's perfectly reasonable to require IMBs who solicit business in the U.S. to meet certain standards of professional conduct, and that a company offering that type of service (marriage brokering, as opposed to a simple dating service where the stakes are lower) ought to be at least that careful about their clientele. They are very careful about the women whose marriages they facilitate, because they don't want angry customers--or lawsuits. I suspect that if they were in as much danger of tort litigation from dissatisfied or injured foreign brides as they are from dissatisfied or injured male clients, they'd run these checks in a heartbeat. But, they aren't and they don't, so in comes the Big Mean Government to do it for them. And whether or not one approves of THAT has more to do with fundamental political philosophy than with views on gender dynamics, IMO. Personally, I think this has the potential to bring a much more legitimate, everyday vibe to the IMB industry, meaning perhaps more foreign women will want to participate, and perfectly well-meaning men who use IMBs will not automatically be regarded as shady dudes trying to "buy" a woman.

So, having done that, do they need to run the background check on all K1 petitioners? I mean, it is called the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act, not the Every K1 Visa Petitioner Screening Act. If you assume that the important government purpose here is regulating marriage brokers doing business in the United States to ensure that they are taking some responsibility for the safety of everyone involved, then all the business with the new I-129F and the "did you meet her in a box, did you meet her with a fox?" routine don't quite meet the "narrowly tailored" standard in my opinion. I think that IMBRA needs to focus on the IMB, period.

Then maybe the number of cranky people screaming that radical feminists have invaded the government and want to trample the rights of everything with a Y chromosome could be kept to a minimum, so that we average hardworking everyday feminists can get back to growing our leg hair and painting mother-goddess figurines.

SPELLING LESSON:

Hillary (note the double-L) = Democratic Junior Senator from NY

Hilary (note single-L) = everyone's favorite fuzzalovable Tigretigre

This was a huge problem when I went to university in a very Republican NY county in 2000. I saw signs everywhere that said "HILARY: NOT HERE, NOT NOW, NOT EVER," or "HILARY GO HOME!" It got really depressing.

GaryC and Luz are such an adorable couple that I feel the chunks rising fast...excuse me while I fetch a basin!

It is really a terrible shame that IMBRA has had the unintended consequence of trivializing the entire issue of violence against women. It took decades for that issue to escape classification as a "private family matter," and now it is rapidly headed towards dismissal "hysterical feminist propaganda." It won't be long before nobody pays much attention to it anymore. Again.

Which is a really sucky situation, since the whole time we are debating whether or not it is "fair" to pay "special" attention to female victims of relationship violence, it will be taking place.

I'm not going to hand out specific research, because anything I cite will probably be dismissed as fabricated feminist lies. People are a lot more likely to accept the validity of material they've located themselves. Plus I think it's best to do one's own research anyway. I do know, however, that there is a lot of data, based on longitudinal studies, about what happens to children who witness domestic violence in their homes. I also know that abusive partners tend to be abusive parents as well. Funny thing about all this family violence--it tends to get handed down from generation to generation like Grandma's ugly knick-knacks. Except the next generation doesn't always "keep it in the family."

To the men who are so angry about being pigeonholed as an "abuser" just for being male in this country: did it ever occur to you that the government is desperate? I worked for a pro bono firm that provided services to victims of family violence, and spent a lot of time listening to state and local government officials, law enforcement officers, and social services providers about how inundated they were with victimized women and children in desperate need of assistance, protection, and services. And about how they needed more people, more facilities, and MORE MONEY. If you are curious, do some research on how many workdays are lost per year due to domestic violence matters. Read about how many people go on welfare as a direct result of a domestic violence situation. Learn about how much domestic violence injuries cost HMOs, including Medicaid and Medicare. Learn about how it is a major issue in facilities that serve the elderly, placing even more of a burden on the strained long-term care structure.

It might start to make more sense that our government might attempt a measure, no matter how misguided (and I think IMBRA is misguided in many ways), that they think stands a chance of keeping potential victims under the jurisdiction of another country's government. Particularly now that they are faced with both a greater need for public spending on this issue AND criticism about the fairness of increasing public spending on this issue.

And, next time you stew about VAWA's only purpose being to help women, remember that there are a lot of little boys whose lives will be a thousand times better if they never see Dad hit Mom again. Of course men are not all abusers--and I think we should do our best to keep it that way.

If IMBRA and VAWA aren't sitting well with you because you find them "unfair," come up with another idea for stopping all the damn family violence. Because it is getting pretty scary.

Tigre OUT

I'm telling you, poop is the Great Equalizer of humankind.

Even urinating is fraught with polarizing gender differences: men stand up to pee, women don't.

However, everybody eventually has to take a dump.

And for that, my friends, we put the seat down and we sit, be we male, female, or some of each.

Rather than making the toilet seat the focus of our differences and conflicts as men and women, let us simply leave the seat down in homage to our common ground as human beings.

*cough cough* agitator *cough cough*

Man of Action:

My understanding is that the IMBRA amendment had many sponsors in Congress, and that VAWA had even more.

Why pick Senator Clinton out of the bunch?

Could it be that you are using her as a lightning rod because you know she is a polarizing political figure, and that you figure you can get people who don't like Hillary Clinton on your side against IMBRA by claiming it was her doing?

Yay GaryC in the Phillippines!

I wish a lawyer could help us out!

Haha, don't look at me!

I saw the sarcasm tag all right...I just didn't want people in their excitable states of mind to take the sentiment out of the tag and and start a gender angst parade.

We wouldn't want to get distracted from keeping our eye on those Service Centers!

A few others, off the top of my head:

Angelina & Sarah Grimke - Southern leaders of the anti-slavery movement

Sophia Smith and Mary Lyon - founded prestigious universities for women (Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, respectively) that maintain their academic reputations to this day

Anne Hutchinson - co-founded the American colony that eventually became Rhode Island, and was the first American colony to allow complete religous freedom in its charter

Nellie Bly - investigative journalist, uncovered anti-trust and labor violations committed by the Standard Oil Company

Jane Addams - founder of Hull House, America's first transitional housing program for the poor and mentally ill

Helen Hunt Jackson - wrote the book "A Century of Dishonor," an accounting of the injustices perpetrated against Native American tribes by the U.S. government

No news. *sulks*

Here's a stumper for you guys who despair over the state of American womanhood and yearn for the return of "traditional" women:

There are traditions, and then again there are traditions.

Having a strong sense of personal independence is a very American tradition. Our culture places a lot of emphasis on preserving individuality, self-reliance, and personal initiative.

American women who adopt these values are living in the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, Lewis and Clark, Fredrick Douglass, [insert name of personal American hero here] every bit as much as their male counterparts.

My fiance is coming from the UK to be with me. He is coming here primarily because my career is here, and I am currently the family wage earner. He plans to stay at home--he is recovering from a long-term illness, and is enthusiastic about the prospect of being a "house husband" anyway. He's a writer by profession, so he will probably get back into his work gradually. My work brings in a more predictable income and has more market security. If we were to have children, it would obviously make the most sense for him to stay home and look after the children while I continued to work. To earn money to provide for the family. I could not do this if I were not hardworking and ambitious in my profession, if I did not strive to stand out as talented and driven. It is thanks to generations of men AND women pursuing American ideals of independence and self-reliance that I am able to marry the man I love dearly and have a family with him.

That is as traditional a story as anything you'd find in America, now or two hundred years ago. And I even managed to talk about tradition without discussing cooking and cleaning, or proper wifely deportment. It sure would be nice if we could stop deconstructing everyone's daily lives in search of some "ultimate answer" to the question of how women and men should fulfill their respective roles.

Tigre

[sarcasm] Paging americanwoman to the IS YOUR WIFE THE SAME ONCE IN THE USA??? thread. I think you're the "INDEPENDENT FEMINIST" type the OP was refering to. Good luck with that attitude problem. [/sarcasm]

Can we please please please please please please please please save the critique of American womanhood and/or feminism for the Off Topic forum? I'm an American woman and a feminist and I'm going through the same bureaucratic nonsense as everyone else here. The topical immigration forums (fora?) need to remain supportive for everyone trying to bring a loved one to the U.S., and that kind of talk makes me feel extremely unwelcome, especially when it is said in an overtly hostile context. I realize that there are people here who have sought a partner overseas because of their views about American women as wives, but I am just coming to this thread to check and see what people heard about their petitions today, and really don't want to deal with that stuff right here.

People are tense right now, some might be a bit oversensitive, and some might mouth off a little--that will happen and I think it would be a bit weird if it didn't. But I really don't see why we can't at least cope without resorting to personal attacks based on nationality or gender.

As for my petition, no news, but I think that's to be expected...I'm way behind any of you in line. Will continue to sit tight and remain watchful for any sign of life from the Service Centers.

Tigre

......Just think, tens of millions of illegals in this country never had to go through what we all are being forced to, simply because we chose to play by the rules......

Thanks to the monsters that created the cruel, poorly written law.......

Lord, immigration is stressful! It's good we have a place to come and vent.

How about I play devil's advocate here?

Ten (maybe 12 or so) million illegals who haven't been playing by the rules. Very true. But they're not crossing the border on a nice jetliner. And they're watching their backs all the time. I wouldn't want to be one of them. Neither you nor your loved one will have those experiences, because you chose to play by the rules. Even if it took longer than you liked.

My husband is from a VWP country. While we were apart, we could have easily planned a journey for him to the US. He could have simply said 'Thanks, I'm just on holiday' when questioned at the port of entry. We then could have happily trotted down to the courthouse for a license and gotten married. We could have filed for Adjustment of Status and probably been granted it, all the while pleading we never planned to marry - we were just overcome in the heat of the moment. And we probably would have been successful.

But we chose not to do that. You made the same choice. In essence you choose to protect your fiance and your relationship by going the path that will insure the least long term bumps. At the end of the day, you'll be better off.

And the law itself is not poorly written. The time structure for it and the implementation of it is the monstrosity.

True that, rebeccajo...all of it.

if depression alone was a bar to getting a visa, the queues would be very short indeed.

That's for damn sure...

I guess the only trouble would be that he's under treatment that is really crappy, from doctors who don't know him that well because they see him four or five times a year for about ten minutes at a time. You'd think that would be an indication that they think he's not dangerous...let's hope that's how it looks.

I guess the big thing will just be how the examining doctor reacts to his scars. If he can see that they are really old, that he wants to put this part of his life behind him, and that he is complying with his current doctor and will get good treatment when he's in the U.S., hopefully all will be well. If the doctor is the knee-jerk reaction type, there could be trouble and I guess there's no way to predict.

I think for know we'll just see what kind of letters he can get from his doctors, before we decide to put me to work drafting a hardship letter.

Thanks for the input, Kajikit...there haven't been too many people able/willing to sound off on this issue.

Tigre

Zethris, Pete...sorry for the mix-up

I should at least check and see just who is in my Kool-Aid before I unleash the Kool-Aid man.

Everyone say it with me...

OH YEAH!

Readers of this thread - If you have not contacted your Congressperson or Senator, you must do so today. Tell them this abuse of applicants and lack of accountability by USCIS is not acceptable.

Sheep to the back of the visa line.

With all due respect, zethris: you are now all up in MY Kool-Aid, and you don't even know the flavor.

We are all trying to handle our immigration cases as best we can. It is ultimately our prerogative to decide which actions to take on our OWN cases. We do not work for you, we do not owe you or your agenda anything. I have already written to the CIS Ombudsman; the fact that I have chosen not to contact Rep. Kuhl or Senators Schumer and Clinton at this time is tactical--I may require their assistance on another, unrelated issue. I am simply picking my battles.

Your suggestion that those who elect not to pursue your favored course of action on their own cases should have their applications penalized is your own opinion, to which you are entitled. Airing it, however, has earned you 90 Rude Points, out of a possible 100.

Bottom line: you're not the boss of me. Adjust your attitude accordingly.

As for your secret civil liberties lawsuit, I share Pax's skepticism. I realize I'm not one of "the professionals," nor am I privy to the secret strategy conferences of your legal team, but from my view you might have a procedural due process claim, at most (FYI, I communicated the due process issue to the Ombudsman when I contacted him). Usually when there is some kind of procedural due process SNAFU, the remedy is at equity and not at law. That means that the erring party needs to FIX IT, which is what the relevant agencies are in the process of doing right now. As for a standard negligence claim, I admit that my plebian ignorance makes it too difficult for me to process that one, or to envision how such a claim might possibly be structured.

Which is just as well, since it's a secret.

Shhhh.

A ticked-off Tigre