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Many American women who develop relationships with British men over the Internet face a rough time when they come to Britain, a spokeswoman for the U.K.-Yankee Advocacy Group said.
Sandy Westlake, a coordinators of the group, which acts as a forum for over 5,000 Americans in the United Kingdom, said several women each year are put on a plane back to the U.S. within hours of landing.
Other women told of being grilled at length by British immigration officers and having their luggage searched because of fears they might overstay their visas.
Although most Americans have no problem passing through immigration, single women seem to be the targets of scrutiny and often find the experience traumatic, Westlake said.
In an informal survey by Transpondia, a non-profit group in England, more than a dozen women reported meeting British men on Internet forums only to run into a brick wall when they tried to meet in the U.K.
One woman, who flew into London to meet her future fiance, said upon arrival she underwent hours of interrogation by immigration officers.
"Then I got taken to a separate room where I was alone for a long time and finally a man came in and told me that I was going back [to the U.S.]," she wrote. "I started to cry and he said that if I wanted to cry he would handcuff me and put me in a cage."
In a study released last year by the Home Office, British academics who interviewed immigration officers said they reported being worried that passengers in Internet relationships might try to stay in Britain without a proper visa.
"Officers commented that Internet relationships tend to generate a lot of cases, and are a particular problem among American passengers," the authors noted.
A Home Office spokesman said that he could not go into detail about reasons for people being refused entry into Britain. There were many immigration programs that Americans could take advantage of, he said.
Westlake said the U.K.-Yankee Advocacy Group was pressing the Home Office to publish hard evidence to show that American women were overstaying their visas and to be more even-handed when singling out passengers for questions.
She said some women were already tense having flown thousands of miles to meet a man for the first time - or for the first time in a long while - and would clearly appear nervous to immigration officers.
To avoid being turned back, people in transatlantic relationships often arrange to meet in third countries, or find themselves rushing into marriage, she said.
Keith Best, head of the non-profit Immigration Advisory Service, said it wasn't uncommon for women in Internet relationships to get refused entry into Britain, irrespective of their country of origin.
Although American citizens don't need to apply for a visa if paying a short visit to Britain, women in such situations would be safer applying for one before coming, he said.
Julie Albright, a professor at the University of Southern California, said there were two factors that make Internet relationships so powerful.
Studies showed that people were often attracted to others who were far away, on whom they could project an idealized image, she said.
Also, people could often be much more candid in online discussion than in real life, leading to the formation of connections more quickly.
"To fly all those thousands of miles, it just shows the power of love - or at least the fantasy of love," she said.
Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=/ForeignBureaus/archive/200802/INT20080214c
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