Question & Answers regarding the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act, subtitle D sec. 831-834 (commonly referred to as IMBR)
Q. What is IMBR?
A. IMBR (International Marriage Broker Regulation) is legislation that, theoretically, is supposed to give foreign women more information about US men. It was attached (it failed to pass when it was initially introduced on its own) to the larger Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. It recently passed and will go into effect on or about March 6th, 2006.
Q. What does this mean to me as a client?
A. If you are a United States client you can still use the service as you always have in the past. If you already have the address or other contact information there will be no change at all and you can use any of our services such as gifts, or Express mail or phone translations, etc. This is why we are advising all of our clients to obtain any as many addresses as they can now, before the law goes into effect. We have increased the limit on addresses for our Platinum members to 300, so you can now download up to 300 addresses as a Platinum member before March 6th. If you are not currently a Platinum member click here to join.
Q. What if I do not have the contact information of the woman or women I am interested in after the deadline?
A. If you do not have the contact information for the women you are interested in after the deadline we will ask that you fill out a very short criminal and marital background history form (we will have this available in the middle of Febuary). We will store that form and supply it to any woman who you may be interested in. Once we do that and the woman agrees that she received it and allows us to give out her contact information we will be able to facilitate the communication between the two of you as always.
Q. How will this affect your Romance Tours?
A. You will not notice a difference in the way the Romance tours are conducted other than the fact that all tour participants will have to complete the background form. Other than that the tours will run as they always have giving you the opportunity to meet hundreds of beautiful foreign women both individually and during our Socials.
Q. How will this law affect the service overall?
A. If you already have the contact information you will not notice a difference. If you do not there will be some minor changes, you may have to wait a bit longer for a response, but in the long run it may help us to weed out women who are not really serious and actually provide you with a higher percentage of return letters and interested women. Hopefully the legislation will serve to do what we have been trying to get more and more men to do for many years, go over and meet the women in person!! The law will not hamper you in any way from taking a Romance Tour or even going over individually and meeting the women in person. The letter writing process is fine and even under the new law we will still provide that, however, there is no substitute to meeting in person.
Q. What if I use a service that does not comply or a foreign service.
A. The law states that it does not matter where the company was set up, United States, Russia, the moon, it still must comply with this law if it is selling contact information to US residents. The problem will come in when your fiancée applies for her visa. The consular officer must ask her how she met and if she used the services of an International Matchmaker Organization. If you used an agency that does not comply her fiancé visa can and probably will be denied. Thus it is very important that you use an agency that is complying with this legislation.
Q. Is there now a limit as to how many Fiancée visas I can process?
A. The law is somewhat vague on that issue, below is an excerpt from the law that addresses the number of fiancée visas one can request:
Subject to subparagraphs (B) and (C), a consular officer may not approve a petition under paragraph (1) unless the officer has verified that--
(i) the petitioner has not, previous to the pending petition, petitioned under paragraph (1) with respect to two or more applying aliens; and
(ii) if the petitioner has had such a petition previously approved, 2 years have elapsed since the filing of such previously approved petition.
(B) The Secretary of Homeland Security may, in the Secretary's discretion, waive the limitations in subparagraph (A) if justification exists for such a waiver. Except in extraordinary circumstances and subject to subparagraph (C), such a waiver shall not be granted if the petitioner has a record of violent criminal offenses against a person or persons.