For many of the men who are using increasingly popular online mail-order bride services, "true love" can be found with just a click of a mouse.
But Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., testified to the Foreign Relations Committee on July 13 that she believes the services provided by international marriage brokers are just a unique form of human trafficking. Cantwell is attempting to pass legislation to regulate the growing industry.
There were more than 200 international match-making organizations operating around the globe in 1999, according to a study commissioned that year by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. These businesses arrange between 4,000 and 6,000 marriages between American men and foreign women every year.
Larry Gucciardo of Austin founded OneTrueLove.net six years ago after meeting his wife Natalia through the process of international match-making. Gucciardo said his business has grown from 40 girls in just Russia to 28,000 girls and 200,000 clients.
While there are a few brokers who target American female clients seeking male spouses from other countries, the majority of people who use the services are men, Gucciardo said.
Many mail-order bride Web sites offer glowing testimonials and downplay the possibility of encountering a woman only interested in obtaining a green card to reside in the country.
Gucciardo said this is unlikely, because the process someone must go through to a get a green card is incredibly time-consuming.
The biggest risk of the mail-order bride businesses is the possibility the female will be abused, said Chris Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Bentley said there are many examples of foreign women who have met American spouses with histories of violence through an Internet-based marriage broker, only to be seriously injured or killed.
According to the Tahirih Justice Center, it is extremely hard to track abuse, especially when women are afraid to report it for fear of being deported.
"It's wrong that these women have fewer protections than goods sold on eBay," Cantwell said in a statement.
Cantwell says her proposed International Marriage Broker Regulation Act would put foreign brides on more equal footing with their American grooms.
The bill would require the marriage broker to provide information to potential foreign brides on the rights of victims of domestic violence in the United States.
Usually, American clients can get all the information they want about the foreign fiancée, but the woman only receives information the future spouse wants to share, Cantwell said.
"These women have no way of confirming what they are told about previous marriages or relationships or the American client's criminal history," she said.
Cantwell's bill would also require the client to undergo a background check and provide information on any previous arrest, conviction or court-ordered restriction relating to crimes of violence. A client would also have to provide previous marital history.
Gucciardo said he disagrees with the idea of having businesses like his conduct criminal background checks on clients before allowing them to establish contact with the women.
"It's very discriminatory, because it only applies to businesses like us and doesn't apply to big dating services, like the ones run by Microsoft and Yahoo," Gucciardo said. "A bartender wouldn't ask you for a background check before you talked to a girl at a bar."
The mail-order bride business is an unregulated industry, Cantwell said.
If the bill passes, U.S. marriage brokers will either go out of business or move overseas, where similar businesses operate outside of American jurisdiction, Gucciardo said.
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