Writing for VDARE.COM has made me (almost) famous.
This summer while I was traveling through western Pennsylvania, I stopped off at a saloon recommended by the locals.
Within a few minutes, the fellow sitting on the stool next to me introduced himself as Steve.
When I told him my name and where I lived, he replied:
"Joe Guzzardi! I know you; I read you every week on VDARE.COM"
My new friend went on to tell me that one of his favorite columns—and the favorite of many others judging by the mail I still receive three years after it originally appeared—is The Fiancée Visa Racquet.
Steve suggested with a smirk that I meet his two buddies, "Sam" and "Dave"
"They can tell you what goes really goes on at those 'Meet a Russian bride' places," Steve said.
Sam and Dave, as it turns out, are two confirmed bachelors in their late 30s who one fine day decided that signing up at one of the dozens of Russian "dating agencies" might be a great way to meet eager, willing young women.
So Sam and Dave put down a $300 deposit against their $2,500 total tab to travel to Russia where they were promised they would meet "hundreds of beautiful women" in "romantic settings" and would be "surrounded by 3 or 4 or women" at a time.
Said Sam:
"Think about it. They bring the women to you…by the busload! And they're all dolled up. You don't have to do anything except stand there and smile. You don't buy dinner. You don't engage in witty repartee. And you don't have to drive them home."
The agency offered three "socials" each day. Sam and Dave were very busy fellows. Each social lasted up to six hours—and their tour spanned ten days.
Within no time, Sam and Dave got their patter down. Every day, Sam and Dave would pick out three or four women from the crowd and say to them:
"I'm very attracted to you. Do you think you would like to live in Pennsylvania? Maybe I could tell you more about it if we could talk privately."
Sam and Dave would line up two, three or even four intimate daily "conferences."
By the time their stay in Russia ended, Sam and Dave were totally exhausted. But despite the best efforts of the would-be Russian brides, neither man left the country with any intention to marry anyone at anytime under any circumstance.
Sam and Dave, however, had such a thoroughly enjoyable time that they signed up again for the following year.
According to Dave:
"You just can't beat it for meeting women. They want to get to the U.S. bad and being coy isn't in their best interests. If I had more vacation, I'd take one of the two-city tours…twice the women to choose from,"
I'll forego for now any analysis of Sam and Dave's moral code.
But any potential fiancée visa brides who get duped along the way should consider that part of the risk they take when they put their picture and profile on the Internet. As the saying goes, "You pay your money and you take your chances."
Now let's turn from away from Sam and Dave's amorous adventures.
VDARE.COM's overriding concern is how damaging the K-1 non-immigrant fiancée is to the cause of immigration reduction.
By observing up front and personal a few brides in my English as a Second Language class, I have found these two common denominators in marriages facilitated by the K-1 visa: older guys (often losers) marry younger women who are, to some degree or another, on the make.
And the consequences of these unions are the same as any other form of immigration: more permanent residents, more chain migration and more overcrowding.
What is slowly becoming public knowledge is just how hurtful - except to immigration lawyers and agency operators - these K-1 visas are not only to immigration patriots but also to those for whom hope springs eternal.
Consider this recent letter sent to "Dear Abby" from a reader called "Taken for a Ride":
"I was married to an impotent doctor in New York for three years. He told me I was the cause of his problem—I was too fat (I weighed 115 pounds). As time passed, I realized he was being cruel to me to deflect attention from his impotence. On the day he got his green card (I sponsored him), he left me. I had no idea he had been using me all along to establish his career in the U.S."
Other cases of shameless money-grubbing schemes:
The preposterously easy to obtain fiancée visa could be eliminated tomorrow with virtually no impact on emotional suffering.
And, as previously noted by many VDARE.COM editors and contributors, the U.S. cannot have immigration policies that benefit only a few while harming so many.
Here's an amazing footnote to this reverse Valentine's Day column.
While it is utterly impossible to imagine that President George W. Bush is even aware of the K-1 visa and the fraud that it enables the unscrupulous to perpetrate, Russian President Vladimir Putin individually interceded in a Russian bride scam.
Putin, alerted by a letter from an Australian victim, ordered Interpol police to track down a sophisticated group of con artists who had bilked more than 1,500 men out of $1.5 million.
The Russians, at least, are willing to do what the American government is not: recognize hucksters when they are operating right under your nose.
The course of action I advocate for the U. S.: get rid of the K-1 visa.
Joe Guzzardi [email him], an instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.
