International Marriage Brokers, Cross-Border Marriages and the US Anti-Trafficking Campaign

This article offers a critical analysis of the US 'International Marriage Broker Regulation Act' in relation to its promoters and critics, the women it intends to protect, and the surrounding 'trafficking' discourse. I argue that the act was supported by faulty logic and inaccurate data, and that its passage was linked to conflations of foreign brides with victims of trafficking and domestic violence and of introduction agencies with human traffickers. Riding the Bush era anti-trafficking moral crusade, the act received strong bipartisan support and was promoted as a weapon in the 'war on trafficking' despite a lack of convincing evidence that US 'international marriage brokers' are linked to trafficking. Like the wider anti-trafficking movement, the protection IMBRA offers is more symbolic than substantive. It echoes moralistic nineteenth-century anti-white-slavery campaigns that cast women as potential victims, while promoting and justifying anti-immigration legislation.