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Natasha Henderson was a Russian bride brought over by an older man that had
been married twice before with five children. She is now divorced and has a
son by her ex-husband, and lives in Irving, Texas.
Back on Dec. 4, 2000, a sloe-eyed Nataliya Robertovna Yamayeva arrived in
the United States wearing a $200 engagement ring from her American fiance.
On the surface, "Natasha" Yamayeva was like all other newly minted fiancees,
brimming with affection for her future husband. She was also filled with
pastel visions of her future life in a Southern town bordering a leafy
college campus, where Yamayeva could add to her Russian-earned college
degrees in English and French and the couple could raise the child they were
expecting.
But Yamayeva's new American life would gradually darken. While she blames
her husband, their painful misalliance was facilitated by an international
marriage broker boasting rosters of compliant women once quaintly labeled
"mail-order brides."
"I badly wanted to chase a dream about the overseas prince," says Yamayeva,
her smile tugged by an undertow of sadness. "But how could I know I would
become a hostage to my own husband?"
Yamayeva's story arc - from her first encounter with her American suitor,
through her falling down a marital rabbit hole - is a window into the murky
subculture of Internet-brokered marriages, which often are built over a
cultural chasm of mismatched expectations.
That Yamayeva is Russian is hardly coincidental, as she is part of a recent
wave of fashion-shoot-primped, well-educated Russian (and, often, Ukrainian)
women who, in the wake of the `90s collapse of the Soviet Union and the
recent loosening of visa restrictions, have set their sights on improving
their lives through an Internet matchmaking agency.
The primary motivation pushing many women is the desire to find a
supportive, stable husband - and a lifestyle approaching the
Hollywood-tinted visions they've long nurtured.
And the men? "Essentially, the men are looking for a housewife, reminiscent
of American life in the 1950s," writes Lisa Schwamkrug, a Denton County,
Texas, assistant district attorney, in an independent report published in
2005, titled, "The Russian Mail-Order Bride Industry: From Russia for Love,
to America in Danger."
"Many men state they are either tired of or turned off by feminist American
women and want a wife who is not obsessed with her career or her rights,"
the report says.
To some, the bride is little more than a commodity. At datingdepot.com,
clients were urged to "Add Olga (48872) to my order," according to a report
by the Virginia-based Tahirih Justice Center, a legal services agency
serving immigrant women. And armcandyinternational.com, according to the
Tahirih Center, brashly dismisses the $10,500 fee as "less than (the price
of) an economy car."
To be sure, a mail-order-bride system - where men page through a thick
catalog filled with thumbnail pictures of women before initiating a
letter-based courtship - has been around for decades. But lately, this
process has ramped up to an Internet-woven network of international
matchmaking or marriage brokers - often notable for cheesy handles such as
First Dream (based in Carrollton, Texas), Cherry Blossoms and Hot Russian
Brides - all peddling a virtual runway of comely women, from Russia, Ukraine
and the Philippines, to Costa Rica and Brazil.
More than 400 international marriage brokers are based in the United States,
according to the Tahirih Center. It estimates that one-third to one-half of
foreign fiancees coming to the United States - between 11,000 and 16,500 a
year - encountered their future husbands through an international broker.
Source: http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/390951
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