The Newlybed

Location: Somewhere in America

The set-up: A Nigerian green card scam gone wrong

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.”

The research on sexiness, lustfulness, committedness, and marriage-ness this week is a mixed bag of good, bad and ludicrously ugly. See if you can figure out what’s what, and which ones span all three.

Sweat is sexy: Women can differentiate between men who are turned on and men who aren’t by sniffing their sweat, reports the New York Times.

A survey, reliant on self-reported data we assume, shows that Polish pairs get it on the most of any Europeans, with over 10% of them having sex every. single. day.

That big old study by Larry Young et al just won’t disappear from the news cycle. The latest tidbit? Kissing feels nice because it causes the brain to unleashes stress-reducing chemicals.

The ridiculously uncritical Times of India is reporting on another wrinkle in this research - that Supersmart Scientists will create drugs to make us fall in or out of love. Wrong. We debunked that one a month ago.

But wait! Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, says that kissing is all about mate selection and pair bonding. The cool thing about her research? Her next study “will take place in a secluded room at the back of an academic building with flowers, candles, a sofa and jazz music playing in the background”.

Women’s likelihood of marrying is shaped by race, education levels and economic class. 42% of black women never marry; onyl 21% of white women remain single throughout their lives. The black marriage rate dropped by 34% the last few decades.

Yes, it’s not just the cascade of neurochemicals from physical contact that help couples feel good. There are other, albeit less understood, plusses that come from dating and relating.

According to a Barbados Advocate interview with Harry Reis, PhD and co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Human Relationships, married people [and others in close relationships] can expect to experience:

• Less depression and substance abuse
• Lower blood pressure
• Natural pain control
• Longer life

The biggest surprise? Faster healing: “researchers at Ohio State University Medical Centre gave married couples blister wounds and among spouses who interacted warmly with each other - theirs healed nearly twice as fast”.

CBC’s always excellent Quirks and Quarks tackles the question many have been asking this month:

“Tired of all that mushy nonsense that comes with Valentine’s Day - the schmaltzy cards, the heart-shaped box of chocolates, the earnest whispers and secret nothings? It’s about time someone took a cold, harsh look at love and expose it for what it really is: chemistry.”

Four scientist folks answer the call. Click the heart to download the full show.

I bet you’re feeling chaffed. Or chuffed, maybe. After all, it’s a few days after V-day and that inevitable hangover really hunkered down and it’s prolly still pelting you like a stormy little raincloud perched squarely above your shoulders. So, it’s okay to be grumpy. I hereby grant you full permission to wrinkle your nose, furrow your brow, cross your arms and reach for the nearest pot of coffee/bottle of aspirin/jug of hooch.

While you’re soothing yourself, here are some ridiculously bad headlines to help chase away that grump face. I put them in a numbered list to help you navigate.

1.) The majority of people polled in this unauthored, unverified, unreliable, but still-reported-as-real-news survey turn down sex occasionally because they’re stressed at work, or sick, or taking care of behbehs or just not feeling it.

2.) Wait - did UPI just forget to credit Consumer Reports as the source of this illuminating investigatory work? And will Consumer Reports start verifying these preliminary findings in their labs any time soon? (Hint to CR: it could be AWESOME)

3.) Four days before day 13 of their menstrual cycle, ladies become exceptionally fond of lads with oversized pupils. It’s a scientifically-proven fact or something.

4.) Prairie voles are surrogate humans, so it’s scary to know that when a male prairie vole is separated from his ladyvole, he gets bummed out. Just like human voles! Damn you vasopressin depletion and elevated levels of cortisol!

5.) Despite apocalyptic warnings on how sex is the worst thing ever, teenagers won’t stop having sex or being little sluts.

6.) Foreplay doesn’t matter to chicks? And two-pump chumps are just as good as marathon men? Um, sure researchers, it’s all about the dude and his skills. We ladies just lay there with our eyes squinched shut thinking about England until our flowers get all pollinated and tickly and we shudder ourselves into a lady-bits sneezing fit.

Oh Tina Brown. I kinda liked you.

So, why did you have to go and harsh our buzz?

Until now, The Newlybed had a good week leading up to V-Day. We gushed about a new NILF-crush, we felt empowered by an Aussie take on realizing the benefits of being happy, and we found a new book to keep by the bedside.

I know that you’re in the business of being controversial and thought-provoking and that getting eyeballs means keeping your writers’ freezers stocked with frozen dinners.

But a press release trumpeting poll results which indicate that economic-inspired negativity has breached the impermeable hull of the newlybedrooms? Just cruel.

And it’s hard to underestimate the importance you assign to these things. In fact, you refuse to let us, as your wonderful PR hacks’ work (emphasis theirs) shows:

ASTOUNDING FINDINGS FROM VALENTINE’S DAY POLL INCLUDE:

• 42% of the Americans surveyed are now less likely to have children
• More than one in three are less likely to get divorced
• In both sex and dating, Americans are being more careful. 41% are more cautious about who they date and one in five are using more birth control to avoid having children

Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not. Well-choreographed efforts to manipulate the relationship between causation and correlation always irk me, but I can get past that. I’ll ignore the so-called third person effect that taints survey results and instead focus on what I find most controversial and problematic: sexual frequency & income.

In other words, the more you make, the more you bang. 43% of couples making over $75000 a year have sex 6 times a month or more, while only 21% of those making less than that do the same. Anecdotal accounts of jobless spouses not being in the mood seem to make sense. This advice column proves that point pretty well for you (but goes farther in providing concrete strategies to deal with fallout).

But on the heels of both the DABA debacle and controversial research that asserts the bigger a man’s wallet, the bigger his lady’s orgasms, it seems like your de-contextualized findings do little more than reify what would otherwise be (rightly) considered dated, sexist stereotyping: If the he’s not bringing home the bacon like he used to, maybe he’s not the man you need him to be?

What’s more, you’re going to have to keep going to work and hold off on your True Destiny as a Woman: having kids. Why else would you state that “It’s startling to learn here of the number of people who are postponing having children for financial reasons. We could be about to see a potential Baby Bust.” Postponing is very different from nixing the possibility altogether, Tina. So if little junior or juniorette arrives a year or two or three late, there’s no net difference. Unless, of course, you expect that babies roll off the factory line in some weird Fordist production system and any hiccups in this are likely to cause inventory delays for pissed-off would-be octo-moms.

The one bright spot? 80% of democrats and nearly half (48%) of Republicans believe Barack and Michelle have a true romance.

Maybe it’s because they clear the $75,000 threshhold and already have their baby-making done?

Yesterday, I fully endorsed the Kosher Sutra. Rabbi Shmuley won me - a secular humanist with esoteric Buddhist leanings - and thus secured a slice of the married-person demographic. But we secular humanists with esoteric Buddhist leanings are not as powerful or plentiful as the Liberal Elite Media would have you believe.

So the good Rabbi is courting a more influential pool or people: Christians.

Lots of headlines (and a Newlybed blog post) were made when proclamations from radical religious leaders encouraging their congregations to spend more time attending to their spouses as sexual partners.

Shmuley is careful to dial things back. A long, well-reasoned article introducing his book is careful to include lots of endorsements from Christians of many stripes, like religious historian Martin E. Marty (yep - that’s his real name) who summarily says: “It is hard to get around the observation that, overall, sexual issues — be they biological, theological or moral — are the most controversial subjects in religion today. Like it or not, understandings of human sexuality combined with issues of authority — who decides about practices? — concern everybody from Mennonites to Greek Orthodox.”

Often, though, people of the cloth get confused by the whole sex thing. Why? They don’t have much training in seminary school, and, says Shmuley, they forget that the bible “includes an entire book, The Song of Solomon, which is an erotic love poem”. Perhaps that explains why unmarried probably-virgins like Rev. James Healy misguidedly advise their flock to think about married sex as a Biblical parable:

Catholic couples should look to three episodes in the life of Jesus as a model for their marriage — the transfiguration, the crucifixion and the resurrection. he says.

The transfiguration was a “mountaintop” experience for Jesus and his three disciples, much like a honeymoon, he says. When Jesus came down from the mountain, he was hung on a cross, and that is what awaits every couple sometime in their marriage. A child is born and the dynamic changes. Or no child comes. Or a job is lost. Or an identity is smothered.

“But if we are faithful, we will rise with Jesus again. And it doesn’t happen just once in a marriage, but over and over,” Healy says. “If we can handle that, nothing can separate us from God.”

Other tomes indicate that marriage is really about the public performance and not about private commitment. According to a Christianity Today article, a soon to be released Christian marriage book called Just Sex? counters the notion of “‘consenting adults in private’, and instead focuses on a couple’s public declaration of love and commitment in front of friends and family, who in turn promise to support them in their relationship, that gives marriage its intimacy and stability.

But isn’t it wrong to see marriage, even when paraded around a closed-off and supposedly supportive Christian community, as a showmanship competition? Like Shmuley says, too many religious couples view such eroticism as somehow unholy, as if a kind of sisterly familiarity were more righteous: “It’s essential to bring back lust into a marriage, he says. Love may be beautiful, but it’s not enough.”

Yesterday, I wrote about the witch hunt in Georgia where academic researchers who study human sexuality are threatened with being ousted by the state government.

Even though it’s likely well beyond the lawmaker’s purview, they have not yet backed down from calls for a ‘grassroots campaign’ to rid the hallowed halls of their public learning institutions of such menaces as professors Kirk Elifson and Mindy Stombler, whose work seems to focus mainly on disease prevention and harm reduction.

I write today to let you know that the Atlanta-Journal Constitution is now covering the story, framing it as “a culture war in the General Assembly over Christian values and public policy”.

And, if you have five minutes and feel like being a squeaky wheel, why not fire off an email or call one of these puritans up for a chat?

Quiet down! It’s time for our review.

Now, children, what did we learn this week?

For one, we learned that women with large chins are more likely to cheat. It’s not because they’re more aggressive, but because the reptilian brain of males see them as less attractive as long-term partners. The real reason? Because the researchers say that sharper features are seen as more masculine and dudes don’t trust them to behave femininely, you dig?

If you don’t have sex, ladies, then you’ll just end up feeling worse. Research shows that women suffering from low sexual desire are less satisfied with their lives. So get it together, okay?

And also gay and bisexual junior high and high school students were a lot more likely to either get pregnant or get someone pregnant. Yes, a study published last year by University of British Columbia researchers found that “found that when British Columbia boys in grades 7 to 12 were surveyed in classrooms in 2003, those who said they were homosexual were, statistically speaking, 3.56 times more likely to get a girl pregnant, while bisexuals were 3.61 times more likely to than heterosexuals.” Baffling, right?

So it’s probably best if you refrain from sex until you’re 25. Because if sex was a normal, natural thing for teenager, a new book titled “Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children” would probably be called “Sex: It’s a Normal, Natural Thing for Teenagers.” BUT IT’S NOT NOW IS IT? Ahem. Sorry. Authors Dr. Joe McIlhaney and Dr. Freda Bush (titter! tee hee!) say that young people should wait to have sex until their mid-20s, once their brains have developed fully, and are in a “lifelong relationship” because otherwise that dizzying cascade of neurochemicals like oxytocin (i love you!), dopamine (wheeee!) and vasopressin (hugs for everybody!) will fuck you up forever.

Or at least, they’ll make it so nobody will love you: because too much sexy fun when you’re young obviously means that when teens become adults and “they are ready to have a long-term relationship, it interferes with their ability to develop it, because those neurological circuits have been weakened in the ability to attach, and the dopamine rush rewarding you for the behaviour has taken precedence” say authors. Keep it above the belt, okay?

Republicans in Georgia are working to oust tenured faculty from their professorial posts. The excuse? Econopocalypse-related budget restraints. The real reason? Their sex-related research matter is too scandalous.

According to a Fort Mill Times article, “State Rep. Charlice Byrd of Woodstock took the House well on Friday to announce a ‘grass-roots’ effort to oust professors with expertise in subjects like male prostitution, oral sex and queer theory. ‘This is not considered higher education,’ she said. ‘If legislators are going to dole out the dollars, we should have a say-so in where they go.’”

“Hill and Byrd were incensed to learn a University of Georgia professor teaches a graduate course on ‘queer theory.’ They also took aim at Georgia State University, where an annual guide to its faculty experts lists a sociology lecturer as an expert in oral sex and faculty member Kirk Elifson as an expert in male prostitution.”

Elifson’s profile on the GSU website, however, indicate that his future research ambitions include working to “assist community based organizations to implement HIV/STD interventions for incarcerated men and women, and to gain insight into the health related consequences of substance abuse.”

Dangerously radical?

Hardly.

A search of the University’s expert guide, however, yielded just 11 other sex-focused professors, hardly sufficient for the widespread conspiracy Byrd suggests, nor would the elimination of their salaries (even a very generous $100,000 a year X 12 is only $1.2 million) be sufficient to reverse the financial fortunes of an organization as large and complex as a University.

So, legislators, let me plead: keep these professors in their posts - these research dollars need to stay where they are. As this blog has demonstrated here, here, here and here, the current state of affairs is rather abysmal. Unvetted surveys of unrepresentative samples, complete indifference of the yawning chasm between causation and correlation, and a continued push for headline-grabbing results have all conspired to produce a farcical, if not dangerously misleading, body of research.

Emphasis, seemingly, is on the creation of a self-sustaining synopsis factory. Little regard is given to the ways that real-world impacts of these research findings: they influence behavior, incite trends and push the social agenda either towards or away from more tolerance, understanding and acceptance.

Find it distasteful or even offensive? Engage in some healthy dialogue through already-established channels of communication. Ultimately, if it’s too much to expect lawmakers to champion free expression, isn’t it too little to expect that they refrain from discrimination and censorship, perhaps especially in its insidious grass-roots form?