Nice exchange on pending legislation & agency/customer responsibility....didn't want it to get buried.
Heat wrote:
- Patrick,
I agree 911 did slow everything down a bit.
But I respectfully disagree that they (the agencies) are not at fault for not screening the girls better.
for not protecting the client.
When the Embassy see them sending 60-70 year old men to the green chard sharks.
They are much tougher with the average guys.
Thus they are aiding and abetting fraud.
Why? Follow the money.
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Patrick wrote:
"But I respectfully disagree that they are not at fault for not screening the girls better. For not protecting the client."
The changes I'm aware of are those requiring that the women be informed up front of their ability to get out of an abusive relationship without risking deportation, the penalties for immigration fraud, and the fact that the agency industry is unregulated. The other involves providing any woman who asks for it, a background check of the man interested in her.
The "client" being protected by these changes is the woman, not the man. I believe adding more protections for the women is a good thing. However, the way it's proposed to be implemented is to place the burden on the agency with heavy fines for non-compliance. You see, they're attacking the agencies just as you are.
The problem is that the US government can not impose any penalty on a foreign agency owner and they can not enforce these regulations on them. They will simply drive more ownership of agencies to the foreigners. The women will not be informed of their immigrations rights, nor will background checks be available.
What should be done is to add the warnings to the documentation delivered in the immigration forms. They could also force the petitioner (i.e. the man) to pay for a background check that is sent to the woman as the first step in the immigration process.
Having been around this for the last ten years, I've come to the conclusion that there are indeed sleaze-bags. The percentages are probably higher on the client side than on the agency owner side. People tend to blow trivial things into major lapses in ethics when it comes to agency owners. Guys who abuse their wives and treat them like objects are "victims." I don't buy it.
