Immigrant Women Tell Their Stories by Roni Berger

Author:Roni Berger [Berger, Roni]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780789018298
Google: SDPaAAAAMAAJ
Goodreads: 6148712
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-01-15T10:03:16+00:00

Chapter 6

Immigrants to Australia and New Zealand

Rosa: An Asian in a White Country

Rosa came to Australia from the Philippines in 1998 to escape economic deprivation. She had been working at a low-level clerical position for the department of agriculture when political changes caused those who worked for the previous government to lose their job security. A former co-worker who had immigrated to Australia offered to help find a mate (husband) for her there. Seeing no future in her homeland, she agreed. Some time later, her acquaintance introduced her to a Greek Cyprian man, who claimed to be forty-five and to own an ice cream parlor. After a year and a half of lengthy telephone conversations, he invited her to come to Melbourne, for a visit, and she accepted. “When you are in a situation of high poverty and crime, you are willing to risk life and emotional stability. I was living in a third world country, which everybody wants to escape to find a greener pasture. When I had an opportunity, I grabbed it.

“It was extremely difficult to receive a visa to get out of the Philippines. They pile enormous obstacles in the way of outgoing tourism, and it is next to impossible for single people to achieve a permission to travel abroad.” Gradually it became clear that the only hope for Rosa to obtain a visa was to apply for a fiancée visa, which is issued for a limited time on the basis of a declaration by an Australian of the intent to marry a visitor. Rosa became what is degradingly labeled a “mail-order bride.”

The mail-order bride industry is flourishing, as reflected by Web sites catering to “patriarchal white men.” Some of these sites define themselves as specialized Philippine tours, describing women from this country as “Coming primarily from a lower socio-economic class and looking for a man to provide a secure ‘nest’ for them because of the poor economic and social conditions in their home countries.” Practices vary regarding language, the number of times the address of the same woman is sold, and the attitude toward the women. However, the general perspective is of women as a commodity for sale. (For ethical reasons, addresses of Web pages from which those quotations originate are not cited here.)

Some claim that there is very little difference between these relationships and the growing trend of cyber-relationships and online matching and romances. However, the status of being a mail-order bride deprives women of self-definition and creates an unequal relationship between men and their immigrant wives (Simons, 1999). The process of obtaining the fiancée visa lasted more than two years. It required considerable documentation to establish a genuine intent to marry and the inability to do so in the immigrant’s homeland. After several appeals, the visa was approved. Rosa became one of the thousands of Filipino women admitted to Australia as new wives or fiancées of male citizens. In a way, this follows the long Australian tradition of “marriage migration” practiced in the early

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