Fact & Fiction about 
Filipina "Mail Order Brides"

Written by Bob Lingerfelt webmaster of
ASAWA! A Homepage for Husbands of Filipinas

However, because the issue is so polarized, you'll see a lot of propaganda on the internet which is intended to persuade you one way or the other.  I'm going to tackle a few of the statements you often hear about "mail order brides," pen pals, etc.  Standard caveat here:  Don't live and die according to what I or anyone else tells you.  None of us know it all, not even the know-it-alls.

Below are some frequently disseminated axioms regarding marriage between Filipinas and Americans, with an emphasis on pen pal relationships.  I address each as FACT or FICTION, and offer a comment or two, and some resources, for your consideration.

FICTION

Age structure in the Philippines:
0-14 years:
38% (female 13,841,552; male 14,214,234)
15-64 years:
58% (female 21,603,818; male 20,923,307)
65 years and over:
4% (female 1,425,706; male 1,256,967) (July 1995 est.)
Source: Interactive CIA World FactBook 1996 http://www.geographic.org/geography/cia_world_factbook_1996.html

Comment: There are plenty of available Filipino males.  The population difference is about 700,000 (age 15-64) in a country with a population of about 73,000,000, a difference of less than 1%.

So why do Filipinas marry foreign men?  According to an INS (Immigration and Naturalization Services) study :
"Why do foreign women want American husbands? Many sources suggest that these women are searching for a "better life" in terms of socio-economic factors--they do, for the most part, come from places in which jobs and educational opportunities for women are scarce and wages are low. However, when the women themselves are asked this question, the answer generally indicates an attraction to American men (they look like movie stars) and an aversion to native men. Americans, they say, make good husbands while Filipino (Thai/Indonesian/Russian/etc.) men do not. Americans are thought to be faithful to their wives, while the native men are cruel and run around with other women. True or not, this is the perception."

I'd have to say this is FICTION, though of course it depends on the definition of loser.

Comment: According to the same INS study, "David Jedlicka (1988, cited in Glodava and Onizuka, 1994) surveyed 607 American men seeking mail-order brides and received 206 responses. He found that the men were generally white (94 percent); highly educated (50 percent with two or more years of college, 6 percent with M.D.'s or Ph.D.'s, only five did not complete high school); politically and ideologically conservative; and generally economically and professionally successful (64 percent earned more than $20,000 a year; 42 were in professional or managerial positions). Their median age was 37. The men came from 44 states, with 22 percent from California, and 84 percent lived in metropolitan areas. Fifty-seven percent had been married at least once; most had been divorced after an average of seven years of marriage, 35 percent had at least one child, and 75 percent wished to father additional children. When asked about their religious affiliations, 48 percent of the men identified themselves as Protestant, 23 percent as Catholic, 15 percent as belonging to other religions, and 14 percent as having no religious affiliation."

 FICTION

Comment: Same source. "...we may estimate that 4 percent of the 100,000 to 150,000 women seeking U.S. husbands through international services find them; that is, "mail-order bride" and e-mail correspondence services result in 4,000 to 6,000 marriages between U.S. men and foreign brides each year."

FACT

Comment: Same source. "It is interesting to note that, based largely on data provided by the agencies themselves (along with the Commission on Filipinos Overseas report cited above), marriages arranged through these services would appear to have a lower divorce rate than the nation as a whole, fully 80 percent of these marriages having lasted over the years for which reports are available."  Simple math provides us with a divorce rate of 20%.

The standard Am-Am marriage of today has about a 40% chance of divorce, though the statistics vary wildly according to which source you use.

FICTION

Comment: Well, obviously about 1 in 5 do! (refer to statistics in #4, above).  Many people make a shaky mental connection between the illegality of divorce in the Philippines and the willingness of Filipinas to divorce if they could.  Yes, the divorce rate is 0% in the Philippines, but that's the law, not the culture.  However, in my experience, Filipinas do not take divorce lightly.  IMHO, a Filipina in an honest, loving relationship will not consider divorce as an option even under the most stressful of environments.

 FICTION

Comment: According to a separate INS study only a small percentage are so classified.  To save room, I'll summarize the statistics for you:  About 5% of the overall population of foreign wives can be considered "mail order," by INS standards, whereas about 13% of Filipina wives are classified as "mail order" using the same criteria.  According to my own polling, which is admittedly skewed since my site is on the internet (where most pen pal relationships are formed these days), about 35% of these relationships are what INS would considered technically "mail order."

 FICTION

Whoa now, don't get all defensive on me!  I don't care one way or the other, fellas!  Here  I'm looking at what INS seems to consider a mail order bride, and it is, after all, INS that will determine whether a foreign woman can come to America on a fiancee or spousal visa, and whether she can remain after her conditional status is up.  It doesn't really matter what you, I, or the correspondence services themselves think.  INS gets the last word.  So what is the last word on which girls qualify as "mail order brides?"

Here are some quotes from the INS reports above.  You figure it out.

"The INS headquarters research team reviewed the forwarded cases and classified 12 of them as definitely mail-order cases and 29 as probable mail-order cases, for a total of 41. Cases were classified as "definitely" mail-order if they specifically mentioned an agency or an Internet service."

"They were classified as "probably" mail-order if they described a correspondence followed by a trip to meet or a variation on that pattern, where there was no alternative explanation of how the couple came initially into contact, such as introduction through a relative or friend."

"Therefore, only 0.5 percent of this spot-check sample of approved VAWA cases were demonstrated to be mail-order brides. The researchers did not use the five-fold classification described above. However, in more than 90 percent of the cases, the history showed clearly that the spouses had met through family, friends, or other ordinary social channels."

Comment:  So why do all the correspondence agencies deny being mail-order-bride companies?  Well, a couple of reasons.  One, of course, is that it's just cheap, nasty sounding label.  So they deny it with kind of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  Ironically, most of the online businesses that deny being mail-order-bride companies happily link themselves to "Mailorderbrides.com."

Also, the services do have a legitimate point when it comes to pure semantics.  The name "mail-order-bride" implies that a man can thumb through a catalogue at his leisure, pick a gal he likes, and have her delivered by UPS to his doorstep.  This obviously is not possible.  You cannot order a wife by mail!  So in the strictest sense, these services are not mail-order-bride companies, they are mail-order-address companies.  But don't try this argument with INS!!! Anyway, how you met your fiancee is not as important as how well you get to know her, and how genuine your relationship is, while you start filing the immigration paperwork.

Finally, another reason to avoid the label "mail-order-bride company" is that the Philippines passed a law a while back the prohibited mail-order-bride companies from operating inside the islands, and since many of these companies do at least some legwork in the Philippines, they wisely do not portray themselves as that kind of business.  It seems like one of those laws that is never enforced (at least I've never heard of it being enforced), but why take chances?

FICTION

Comment: In the Philippines, such companies are only illegal if they charge a fee or if the host country cannot protect the Filipina's rights.  Republic Act Republic Act No. 6955, with notes, states:

"AN ACT TO DECLARE UNLAWFUL THE PRACTICE OF MATCHING FILIPINO WOMEN FOR MARRIAGE TO FOREIGN NATIONALS ON A MAIL-ORDER BASIS AND OTHER SIMILAR PRACTICES, INCLUDING THE ADVERTISEMENT, PUBLICATION, PRINTING OR DISTRIBUTION OF BROCHURES, FLIERS AND OTHER PROPAGANDA MATERIALS IN FURTHERANCE THEREOF AND PROVIDING PENALTY THEREFOR"

APPROVED: June 13, 1990

Bans marriage matching for a fee as well as exportation of domestic workers to certain countries which cannot ensure the protection of their rights. Fiancées of foreign nationals are required to attend guidance and counseling sessions through a Department of Foreign Affairs order so as to minimize inter-racial marital problems.

FICTION (well, what she wants is subjective, but the facts make this prohibitive)

Comment: For one thing, it's pretty damn egocentric to presume that all of her family desire to leave their homeland in favor of yours.  But even if that were the case, a Filipina can't bring ANYONE over (except her own children, of course) until she's an American citizen, which will be 3-5 years down the road at a minimum.  For another, only parents and siblings are eligible for petition at that time.   The wait is VERY long.  In most cases, it will be ten to fifteen years before family members are granted visas.  So even if she wanted to bring over even a single family member it would be 15-20 years before he/she arrived.  Which isn't to say she might not try to find suitors for her sisters or nieces while she's here, but we can, I think, safely presume that your sister-in-law and her new American husband will not be moving in with you and your wife...

For More information please visit ASAWA! A Homepage for Husbands of Filipinas

Copyright © 1999