Marriage broker businesses, for University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Social Work professor Marion Tan, is a form of exploitation of single Filipinos who are in search for money. “Mail ordering of spouse is a way of commodifying men,” Tan said. “If you do mail order, it’s like you’re selling people.”

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The prevalence of marriage broker or mail ordering of spouse is largely rooted to poverty as most potential mail order spouse expect financial rewards in entering the dangerous scheme.

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“Because there is lack of opportunity in the country, they have no choice but to look for other ways to become rich or just to survive even,” Tan said. She added that instead of a spouse, Filipinos who participate in mail order are actually looking for a job.

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Most of the Filipino spouses who were sponsored for visas and traveled by foreign nationals from 1989 to 2015, 15.39 percent or 76,845 are housewives, while over 179,849 has no reported occupation according to CFO.

 

A thread with over 10,000 comments in American social news aggregation and discussion website Reddit offered insights on the mail order brides from Russia and the Philippines. According to one commenter, his wife “seemed like she was just doing a job.” One user, on the one hand, wrote, that the wife seemed to be under the impression that a man was to be kept like a king and she was there for food and sex. However, the biggest surprise, according to him, was that his wife was sending money back home to her husband and kids in the Philippines.

 

CFO immigrant service officer Camille Lacaba, in a press release, did not deny that most Filipino women who got married under the scheme want to help their families for economic reasons. But the immigrant service officer has also cautioned the public against the mail order bride modus operandi that leads to human trafficking. According to her, the commission has received quite a number of complaints from Filipino wives of abuses committed by their foreign husbands.

 

Chita,  a 45-year-old teacher who submitted her photo to an agency to find a husband that would support her family and get her out of marriage anxiety, ended up being abused by her stepchildren.

 

Others, like 25-year-old Susana Remerata, lose their lives in the hands of their foreign partners. The 25-year-old Filipina married 47-year-old lab technician Timothy Blackwell in 1995. But the marriage lasted barely two weeks and ended up in the tragic death of Remerata and her unborn child, along with two of her friends when Blackwell opened fire as the three women were sitting on a bench on the second floor of the King County Courthouse.

 

Although RA 10906 claims to protect Filipinos from abuse and exploitation by mail order spouse businesses or marriage brokers by increasing the maximum penalty from Php 500,000 to 1 million and prison time from six to eight years to 15 years, as well as, including males as potential victims and expanding the term into mail order spouse, the Anti-Mail Order Spouse Law does not cover possible transactions in social media or draw a clear line between legitimate dating sites.

 

Tan considers this a problem. According to her, social media and dating sites are heavily being used by such businesses and some sites can circumvent the law by doing business indirectly. Unfortunately, the law has no provision on surveillance of these dating sites, which makes it easier for businessmen to continue and promote the illegal conduct.

 

In her study of different mail order brides, immigration scholar Nicole Constable, argues that Filipino women should be viewed as having other motivations other than getting out of poverty.

 

Shaira, a 21-year-old licensed Psychometrician, met her partner of Danish nationality on an online forum back in 2012. “We both became members of One Piece forum and from there, we started exchanging private messages from time to time,” she recounted. But it was only in 2015 when communication between the two became constant via instant messaging app Skype. In January 27 of this year, during her partner’s visit and their first face-to-face meeting, the relationship became official.

 

Shaira shared that she and her partner have talked about their future plans and have arranged a probable set-up for their relationship. After giving up her option to go to medical school, she intends to take up her Master’s abroad. “I will study in Germany or United Kingdom, and we’ll move in together at his apartment in Denmark,” she said.

 

She also admitted that her partner’s parents were “suspicious” of her at first because of the pervasive perception on Filipinos marrying foreigners for money. “His mom’s initial reaction was ‘Don’t give her money’,” she said.

 

For Shaira, meeting someone online can be very intimidating, but then, she believes once you are a smart user and aware of the dangers your online activities may post, building a relationship in that platform may be possible.