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WHEN A FEDERAL judge in Atlanta last year issued a restraining order halting enforcement of a law to protect “mail-order brides,” the president of an Alpharetta Web site for men seeking foreign brides thought other judges would follow suit.
He was wrong.
Instead, on March 23, U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper reversed himself, finding that the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005—which requires male users to reveal their arrests or convictions for violent crimes—does not restrict the Web site’s commercial free speech rights.
Cooper’s order denying European Connections & Tours Inc. the injunction it had sought suggested that the law would impact only “those American men who have a significant history of violence toward women—the very type of person that Congress is concerned about.”
Setting aside what he described as European Connections’ “doomsday scenario,” the federal judge suggested that if the new law succeeds in reducing abuses of “mail-order brides” by their American spouses, the international marriage broker business “may actually grow.”
“In any event,” Cooper added, “Economic loss … does not constitute a First Amendment injury. … When balancing the harms in this case, the Court is confronted with the classic ‘blood-versus-money’ analysis, and the safety of foreign women coming to the United States clearly is the more vital interest.”
On Monday, Preston Steckel, the president of European Connections in Alpharetta, said he was “very disappointed in the outcome.” The federal statute, passed in February 2006, could make his business liable if the men who enroll in one of several international matchmaker Web sites he operates lie about previous arrests or convictions.
The statute requires international marriage brokers to obtain a certification from their U.S. customers documenting whether they have ever been the subject of civil protection or restraining orders; whether they have been arrested or convicted on criminal charges that include homicide, assault, domestic violence, sexual assault, torture, kidnapping or stalking; and whether they have any arrests or convictions associated with engaging in prostitution or procuring prostitutes. It also requires customers of international marriage brokers to disclose their marital histories and the ages of any children under 18.
The federal statute also requires international marriage brokers to search national and state sex offender registries for the names of the men they may enlist and provide that information to the foreign women seeking either romance or marriage.
Steckel said that although he does not object to individual background checks, “We are not in the security business,” and he has no way of policing compliance.
Steckel’s Web sites operate as introduction and matchmaking services for American men seeking foreign women, primarily from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Men pay a membership fee to join, which varies based on the nature of the services. Women, who are often located through European Connections’ Russian counterpart agencies, pay nothing except for e-mail and translation services.
“We’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” Steckel said. “We have no way of verifying information that a person puts down.”
Steckel explained that applicants who do not have any criminal problems “will be honest.” But applicants “who actually have a problem, who are abusers—they will lie.”
Meanwhile, the requirement to provide criminal background information on would-be grooms may give foreign women drawn to Steckel’s sites “a false sense of security.” If male customers with violent histories lie with impunity, “You have a lady who has got her guard down,” he explained.
Steckel also expressed concern for male customers who might reveal a violent criminal history. “I don’t know about ladies in other countries,” he said, “but the Russians are very, very devious. … If we have to get together all this information, they could download all this information and come back and blackmail people who filled out the form.”
But Steckel said he will not appeal Cooper’s ruling.
“I just feel like it’s wasting my money,” he said.
Instead, he said he will convert two of his Web sites, EastWestmatch.com and RussianLadies.com, to entertainment sites with information and chat rooms rather than serving as a paid liaison to foreign women seeking American husbands.
His third site, Globaladies.com, will conform to the new regulation. “When you are in business, you adjust,” he said. “That’s what we are going to do.”
Decatur lawyer Ralph S. Goldberg represented Steckel.
According to Cooper’s order, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2006, international marriage brokers “simply transmit background data from their male clients to their female clients as a prerequisite to releasing the women’s personal information, and the international marriage brokers expressly do not vouch for the background information provided by the male clients.”
The 2006 law is one of a succession of laws Congress has passed over the 15 years to address what Cooper’s order said is a rising rate of domestic violence against immigrant women, many of whom entered America under temporary visas as “mail-order brides.”
Cooper noted that the international marriage broker industry “has grown rapidly in response to increasing demand by some American men for foreign ‘traditional’ wives.” A 1999 report to Congress by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that more than 200 U.S.-based businesses paired 4,000 to 6,000 American men a year with foreign women seeking marriage. By, 2004, Cooper’s order said, those numbers had doubled.
As the number of visas for foreign fiancées has risen, there has been a corresponding increase in domestic violence cases involving “mail-order brides.”
In response to that rising tide of abuse, Atlanta native and Agnes Scott graduate Layli Miller-Muro, formerly an attorney with Washington’s Arnold & Porter, established the Tahirih Justice Center in Washington. The Tahirih Justice Center, represented by Jones Day attorney Randall M. Hawkins and Arnold & Porter attorney Randall Miller, intervened in the Atlanta case after Cooper had issued the temporary restraining order.
The U.S. Justice Department was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Alonzo H. Long in Atlanta. Long could not be reached for comment.
On Monday, Hawkins said that in the final order denying an injunction to European Connections, “Judge Cooper hit the nail on the head” when he said the marriage broker regulation act “is highly likely to reduce domestic abuse—and may actually save lives.”
“The whole purpose of the law is to protect people who largely don’t have the protections that other folks do,” Hawkins said. Mail-order brides make up “a vulnerable population … and I think Judge Cooper recognized that.”
In his order, Cooper noted that “the profit incentives of international marriage brokers are presently skewed to satisfy the male client rather than to safeguard the women they recruit.”
That makes them different from religious and cultural nonprofit organizations that arrange marriages across international borders as well as international dating services which charge men and women equally, Cooper said. Both types of organizations are exempt from the new statute.
“Congress reasonably could assume that without the motivation to keep its male customers satisfied, traditional religious and cultural matchmaking agencies are not as likely to be complicit in developing abusive relationships,” Cooper’s order continued.
The Congress, he continued, was also “particularly concerned with companies that collected their membership fees from men and not from women. This distinction characterizes the IMBs [international marriage brokers] where the man pays and the woman typically is the ‘commodity.’ … Congress was concerned with the power imbalance that results in a business model where the American male pays for the services, but the woman does not.”
Cooper also dismissed arguments that the marriage broker law attempts to impermissibly regulate commercial speech.
“IMBs are not restricted from touting their services,” Cooper wrote. “Nowhere in the IMBRA [International Marriage Broker Regulation Act] statute are there any provisions attempting to regulate the content of IMBs commercial messages in which they tout their respective services in an attempt to induce commercial transactions.”
Instead, Cooper said the law’s disclosure requirements “are reasonably related to Congress’ legitimate interest in preventing fraud and deception and addressing domestic abuse and human trafficking against so-called ‘mail-order brides.’”
For his part, Steckel said that no foreign bride who has paired with an American man through his sites has ever been a victim of violence. In more than a decade that he has been in the matchmaking business, Steckel said there have only been “three or four situations” in which a foreign bride was isolated in her home by her husband. In those instances, he said, his company provided the woman with a return plane ticket home.
Steckel also acknowledged “an occasional call from a lady having trouble,” but denied any of them were abusive situations. “We will, on occasions, if we think it will help, we will talk to the men,” he explained. “We have never had anybody hit anybody. It’s always been kind of argument-type things where they’re not getting along. … In some situations, we’ve called shelters. But overall, I could say that I bet we’ve had no more than 15 problems of any kind.”
By R. Robin McDonald, Staff Reporter
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