The explanation: This story from Ghana News online, describes how a Nigerian couple that migrated to America in search of a better life and a green card.
“First, the man introduces his betrothed wife to his American darling as his sister to pave way for his marriage to the American lady. When the marriage crashed, his wife marries an American to secure the life ticket. So how did it fail? Attempt by a friend to sleep with his pseudo sister (Nigerian wife) foiled the deal. His ‘oyibo wife realized she was a guinea pig and quit the affair.”
The stuff of urban legend, right? Perhaps, although the news article details many more cases which prove the enduring popularity of the green card scam myth.
What is more telling (and more reliable) however, are the official sources who verify these rumors as fact.
ILW.com - a web newsletter for immigration lawyers - recently published its own research on the phenomenon, stating that more than 2.3 million foreign nationals gained lawful permanent resident status by marrying an American between 1998 and 2007. Two notable bullet points:
An overwhelming percentage of all petitions to bring foreign spouses or fiancés to the United States illegally (or to help them adjust visa status if they are already in the United States on non-immigrant visas) are approved — even in cases where the couple may only have met over the Internet, and may not even share a common language.
Marriage to an American is the clearest pathway to citizenship for an illegal alien. A substantial number of illegal aliens ordered removed (many of whom have criminal records) later resurface as marriage-based green card applicants.
And the analysis beyond the anecdotes shows that marriage fraud isn’t new, nor is it going away:
“Although the idea of importing foreign “catalog” spouses dates back to the 18th century, the concept of “mail-order brides” didn’t really take off until after the end of the Cold War and then exploded in popularity after the advent of the Internet, which has done more to facilitate cross-cultural relationships than any other event in human history.”
Cherry Blossoms alone claims to have match-made over 100,000 international couples since its inception in 1974; thousands of other services have got in the game since.
There are cultural biases at play, too, namely that foreign femmes are more likely to feel comfortable in traditional homemaker roles. Enter, GoodWife.com to point out that radical feminazis (their words, not mine) have polluted the potential spouse pool which requires men to look abroad. But there’s more to it, argues the ILW: marriage for money, arranged marriages and harbouring terrorists, also factor prominently in these international relationships.
The authors freely admit “there is no way of knowing what percentage of the 300,000-plus spouses who gain green cards each year through marriage to American citizens or LPRs do so based on a fraudulent relationship, but consular officers interviewed for this Backgrounder offered estimates ranging from 5 to 30 percent.”
While a list of action items for immigration officials concludes the piece, ultimately, opines the writer, ““if the American believes the relationship is real, then it is.”
By now, you’ve probably heard of the flap over the Vermont Country Store: the vaunted, olde-tymey retailer who markets under the “Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find” is now hawking sex aides in its latest catalog.
But here’s the thing: the dust-up over the Intimate Solutions section is less about bucking the brand’s traditionalist image and more about the fact that they’re reaching out to the blue-rinse crowd:
Explains Orton in a statement to the Associate Press, “we never got any letters saying we want this. This was a sense, because our customers are a certain age and sex is below the surface in the world we deal in. I said ‘Look, let’s see if our customers respond to this.’”
If we assume that seniors, like every other above-consent age group, have a right to good, wholesome, safe and enjoyable sex, wouldn’t the Vermont Country Store be the right brand to help them out? If not, are we comfortable leaving books like the laughable - intentionally or incidentally - “Grandpa Does Grandma” to the task?
Seems to me that satisfying sex for seniors fits perfectly with the “practical & hard-to-find” brand promise.
(Well, specifically Mr. Abraxas, but also to all you other readers of the Newlybed.)
Have a lovely, snuggly, vasopressin-and-oxytocin-induced hazy day out there.
And in case you missed it, Examiner.com published a comprehensive exploration of Valentine traditions around the globe.
Who knew that in Scotland the first young man or woman encountered by chance on the street or elsewhere will become that individual’s Valentine or at both Japan and Taiwan celebrate with two Valentine Days or Belarussians(pictured right) were so into the pageantry of it all?
National Mistress Day is February 13. It’s an unofficial holiday - unlike the observance of Valentine’s Day which, as we all know, seems to be rigidly enforced by powerful chocolate and flower cartels - but one that’s.
Where did it come from, you ask?
Well, the Examiner (via Gothamist via Gourmet Magazine) seems to think that it’s a natural outcrop of overbooked love calendars. While February 14 is taken up by dutiful doting on a spouse, the day before is when highrollers in big cities spend time and money on their other other halves.
Noel Biderman, president of a website which helps married partners cheat, says “It might not be a nationally celebrated day, but it’s at least a day to practice your ‘mistress retention’ skills.” The NY Daily News article he’s quoted in breaks the event into its constituent elements.
So what should you do if you’re married and faithful? Take your spouse out twice! And always always always treat your wife like you would a mistress: consider yourself embroiled in an illicit, hot-like-lava affair, where the conversation crackles, the champagne flows, and the sex sizzles.
You know it’s gotta be mid-February when the flurry of sex/lust/love research goes from a few snowflakes to a full-on blizzard.
The big theme of today - only two! days! before! V-day! - is about our favorite neurochemicals ever, oxytocin & vasopressin and how they conspire to be the boss of you.
It’s so inspiring that we just insist they make a movie or two out of it. So, here are the pitches:
Option A: The Love Dramedy
The research: Bianca Acevedo and company are researchers who, this explains, are “part of a new field in science that seeks to biologically explain love, and so far they have found that love is mostly understood through hormones, genetics, and brain images.” Moreover, says her colleague Larry Young, love “has a biological basis”.
Sure, sure. It’s all between your ears, and magical sparking neurons release chemicals that make you feel good and gooey and keep you coming back for more. It’s drug-like, right?
Of course! “The brokenhearted show more evidence of what I’ll call craving,” said Lucy Brown, a neuroscientist. “Similar to craving the drug cocaine.”
“Romantic love is an addiction; a wonderful addiction when it is going well, a horrible one when it is going poorly,” another researcher on the team said, adding that “People kill for love. They die for love.”
The movie: In the tradition of non-fiction getting spun into rom-coms, someone could write this into a movie. They could set it in a high school and call it Love is the Drug. This is what a trailer might look like:
Option B: The Rom Com
The research: A high-brow piece in the venerable NYT features Hannah Holmes, and her new book “The Well-Dressed Ape: A Natural History of Myself.” Both writer and researcher are helpless against the grey goo-ey-ness of it all, unable resist the lure of likening love to a labyrinth of neurochemicals. In this too-long-to-hold-our-attention article, we learn that “humans, like dolphins and some chimpanzees, are one of the few species that have sex for pleasure, not just reproduction” and that “other unusual human behaviors include the ability to cooperate (especially when we know we’re being watched, as one study showed), and to share resources and territories — albeit with difficulty”.
The piece then blathers on about ring finger vs. index fingers lengths. And then it meanders around Holmes house. Then something about Match.com and how she met her, well, match there. Effing great. But what about brain drugs?
Ah yes, here we go - it’s in that final paragraph about how cute and nice her husband is: “So just by reading my prospect’s face — and humans are very good at gauging personality in a face — I already had an idea he wasn’t aggressive toward me. And since I’m not very aggressive either, that Berlin Wall of caution crumbled pretty quickly. And of course, the oxytocin didn’t hurt.”
The movie: Could this be a movie? Of course. They could call it Love.com. With sexy, hip but non-threatening youthful characters. But it would probably skew too geeky and need be set in Japan.
Take indie rock star Ben Lee, for example. Why he’s a brand-spanking-new newlywed, tying the knot last month to actress Ione Skye.
And not only does he gush profusely about her and they’re awesome nuptials in India, but in this article for Spinner he seems pretty blissed out about his new album, too:
“It’s actually more of a song about the universe,” Lee asserts. “It’s a love song to life. I mean, it can be perceived as a love song to a person, but I really wrote it as a love song to the process of existence. Devotion — it’s all the same whether you have devotion to a person or devotion to music or to nature or to God or whatever you call it.”
I know that this Richard Girling guy’s Times of London piece about the evolution of lust, sex and coupledom is really just about his new book.
I know that everybody wants to have lots and lots of sex. [Bragging about my goal to bang my husband 10, 000 times was one of my first Newlybed blog posts.]
I know that he’s only trying to push buttons when he makes overstatements about what women want from men and what men want from women.
I know his use of statistics is sorta clunky, definitely misleading and applied only to boost the flagging cred of his arguments in order to make the scientifically-sounding headline of “The Evolution of Sex and Marriage” not be a complete lie.
I know, after reading the whole thing more than once, that the assertion below his headline that “We can barely control our sexual appetites, but are hungry for happy, monogamous relationships” is just a big, fucking rouse.
But why does he need 2000 words to accomplish what even middling romcoms do in a single catchphrase?
They may be one of the farthest outposts of the Anglosphere, but Aussies still have some important insights to share with us North Americans, especially when it comes to matters of love and lust.
After all, they have more sex than we do. And that’s important, because, as this columnist points out, there extra oomph in the bedroom packs as much of a happiness-boost as scads of extra money would.
Writes Justine Davies, “couples who have sex at least four times per month effectively create happiness worth US$50,000 per year. Apparently Australians, on average, have sex about three times a week, so I think it would be safe to assume that most of us are managing eight times per month on average. That means, with our currently lousy exchange rate, we’re generating about $150,000 of happiness, just from sex alone!” Add this to the boost from being happily married - pegged at about $100,000 a year - and well, a regular roll in the hay can really mean you’re rolling in it.
Are you keeping up with the Aussies? What’s your marital happiness valued at?
The most revealing tidbit of the article wasn’t the comically inept couple who had trouble distinguishing sex organs, but that in the South African Indian community of Durban “men’s G-strings are very popular with the younger Indian girls who buy it for their boyfriends,” according to an exhibitor at the city’s annual Sexpo.
