Love, honor, or control: domestic violence, trafficking, and the question of how to regulate the mail-order bride industry.

• Author: Lindee, Kirsten M.

Total cost for services: $10,500.00 U.S. A beautiful woman to sleep with at night, kiss in the morning, and love all day long, for so little--less than an economy car. (1)

In recent years, with the development and widespread use of the Internet, the international marriage brokerage (IMB) (2) industry has grown exponentially. In 1997, the Global Survival Network reported that more than 200 IMB companies annually paired between 2,000 and 5,000 American men with foreign "mail-order brides," and in 1998, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) (3) reported that IMBs made between 4,000 and 6,000 such matches. (4) By 2004, those numbers had nearly doubled--recent studies estimate that more than 500 IMB companies annually match between 9,500 and 14,000 foreign women with American men. (5) Should this rapid growth in the "mail-order bride industry" cause concern?

Proponents of the IMB industry emphasize that it helps "American men ... find happiness through inter-cultural relationships leading to marriage." (6) But while extolling such inter-culturalism, proponents also appeal to an inherently traditional and American conception of the family. As one Houston-based IMB advertises, foreign fiancees are not tainted by the perversions that feminism has wreaked on the American family. (7) Unlike American women, who are "so belligerent, angry, selfish, and confused," these foreign women retain traditional (and somehow American) family values:

Her life is centered around her family, her husband and children, [sic] (similar to American women from generations past). These women would rather complement her man, than compete with him. They offer us faithfulness, understanding, religious values, motherly instincts, and most importantly, beliefs. Beliefs that marriages are onetime and perpetual, and that a man should not be judged by material possessions, physical appearance, or age, but by his heart, mind and soul. (8) For IMB companies and clients, therefore, the purpose of international romantic matches appears not so much as the opportunity to experience an inter-cultural relationship, but rather as the opportunity to experience a conception of marriage and gender roles that many believe has become increasingly rare post second wave feminism.

In appealing to these conceptions of marriage and gender, IMBs create and foster an image of "mail-order brides" as submissive, dependent, and deferential. At the same time, by advertising them online and in glossy catalogues, IMBs commodify these women, who can be purchased for less than the price of an economy car. (9) As Layli Miller-Muro, the executive director of the Tahirih Justice Center, has stated, "[t]his industry predominantly places women at a disadvantage where the man is the paying client and the woman advertised as a product, a commodity," thus creating a "presumption of power and a potentially very dangerous recipe for abuse." (10) Indeed, as a 1999 Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) report on the IMB industry explained:

While no national figures exist on abuse of alien wives, there is every reason to believe that the incidence is higher in this population than for the nation as a whole. Authorities agree that abuse in these marriages can be expected based on the men's desire for a submissive wife and the women's desire for a better life. (11) However, available information suggests not only that mail-order brides may become trafficking victims, forced into sex work or domestic service, but also that the IMB industry per se constitutes a form of sex trafficking. (12)

The increasing prevalence of IMBs thus raises two central concerns: IMBs potentially expose women to domestic violence and abuse without offering adequate protections or resources, and IMBs potentially facilitate international trafficking in women. In response to these growing concerns, in late July 2003, Senator Cantwell introduced the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA). Hearings on the proposed legislation expressed unease with the informational and power disparities inherent in IMB matches that make women vulnerable to both abuse and trafficking; however, IMBRA was ultimately attached to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization Bill of 2005, rather than included as an amendment to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA), which was also up for reauthorization in 2005. (13) Garnering unanimous support, IMBRA easily passed through both the House and the Senate. (14) On January 5, 2006, President Bush signed IMBRA into law, and on March 6, 2006, it went into effect.

Part I of this Article examines the rationales for regulating the IMB industry--specifically, the purported connections between the industry and both domestic violence and trafficking--and traces pre-IMBRA attempts to deal with problems associated with the IMB industry. Since the 1980s, these attempts have shifted from a recognition of the IMB problem as one of marriage fraud to one of domestic violence, and from a recognition of mail-order brides as perpetrators of sham marriages to potential victims of domestic violence. Part II examines in detail IMBRA's provisions, concluding that, reflective of the choice to attach IMBRA to VAWA instead of TVPA, IMBRA approaches the purported IMB problem primarily as one of domestic violence, rather than international trafficking. Further, IMBRA views the solution to this problem as the correction of informational imbalances inherent in the IMB industry. Prior to IMBRA, IMBs did not provide mail-order brides with any information on their consumer husbands, and provided them with only limited information on their rights in the immigration process. Under IMBRA, IMBs are required to provide mail-order brides with somewhat more comprehensive information. But in deeming the solution to be primarily informational in nature, this Article argues, IMBRA ignores many of the more systemic power imbalances between mail-order brides and consumer husbands, and between mail-order bride exporter countries and mail-order bride importer countries, that render the IMB industry problematic. In doing so, IMBRA overlooks not only the ways in which the IMB industry facilitates trafficking in women and girls, but also the ways in which the IMB industry might per se constitute trafficking in women and girls. To that end, because IMBRA recognizes mail-order brides primarily as potential domestic violence victims rather than trafficking victims, and because IMBRA attempts to prevent this victimization primarily by correcting informational imbalances, this Article argues that IMBRA may under-recognize or mis-recognize mail-order brides as a group. Part III analyzes current constitutional challenges to IMBRA and concludes by proffering some proposals for augmenting IMBRA and enriching its recognition of both the IMB problem and the women who become mail-order brides.

1. THE ROAD TO IMBRA: WHY REGULATE IMBS?

   in 1999, the INS conducted a study of mail-order marriages in an effort to determine the extent to which the IMB industry poses a problem that should be regulated. Inquiring into the connections between domestic violence, trafficking, and marriage fraud, the study concluded that, although there are well-founded reasons to suspect that the IMB industry contributes to all three, no available data exists indicating the extent to which the IMB industry acts as a conduit for domestic violence, trafficking, and marriage fraud. (15) Despite this lack of data, however, both the law and the media have increasingly viewed the IMB industry as posing significant dangers to mail-order brides. (16) But the ways in which the industry has been deemed problematic has changed over time, even while the incidence and pervasiveness of the problems posed by the industry remain unknown.

   1. The Connection Between IMB Relationships and Domestic Violence

      In 1998, eighteen-year-old Anastasia King moved from her native Kyrgyzstan to America, where she married thirty-seven-year-old Indle King, Jr., an American citizen living in Seattle, Washington. Indle, a divorcee who had abused his previous wife, selected Anastasia from an IMB catalogue of mail-order brides. The marriage soon turned violent. By 2000, Indle had decided that he wanted to divorce Anastasia. Unwilling to pay for a divorce, Indle conscripted a tenant in his home to help him kill Anastasia. Indle, weighing nearly three hundred pounds, pinned Anastasia to the ground while the tenant choked her to death with a necktie. Anastasia's body was found in a shallow grave in a junkyard. Later, it was discovered that Indle, while planning Anastasia's murder, was already seeking another wife through an IMB. (17)

      Anastasia King's story is often told by scholars and activists advocating for greater regulations targeting IMBs. Unfortunately, because the Department of Justice does not distinguish between American-born and foreign-born persons--let alone American citizens and mail-order brides-in its crime statistics on domestic violence, most of the information on domestic abuse in IMB relationships is similarly anecdotal. (18) Consequently, the extent to which the IMB industry fosters violent relationships remains unknown. As this section argues, however, informational and power imbalances inherent in IMB matches suggest that the incidence of domestic violence in these relationships is higher than the national average. (19) Further, this section contends that such imbalances are compounded by the IMB industry's apparent willingness to provide services to violent men. (20) Despite the lack of data, therefore, there is good reason to conclude that the IMB industry fosters relationships in which the risk of domestic violence is great.

      1. Informational and Power Imbalances

      Prior to the passage of IMBRA, the American IMB client received a complete background check on his mail-order bride through immigration procedures, as well as photographs...