Many women from poverty-stricken villages in the Philippines are being lured to Canada as mail-order brides, with false hopes of happiness, say Vancouver researchers who have spent the past year looking into the situation.
The number of Filipina women entering Canada as brides is increasing, with special agencies set up in Canada specifically to entice them here, Lynn Farrales and other researchers from the Philippine Women Centre of British Columbia say. In fact, they say, the trafficking into Canada of women as brides is on the verge of exploding into a full-scale industry, similar to that in the United States.
About 5,000 mail-order brides are believed to enter the United States each year, mostly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union. No figures are available on mail-order brides entering Canada.
"Instead of sugar and rice, . . . people are being exported," Dr. Farrales said at a press conference in downtown Vancouver. The report, entitled Canada: The New Frontier for Mail-Order Brides, was financed by Status of Women Canada and released yesterday.
Most of the women are chosen by the bride-brokering agencies or through Internet sites where men can browse through photos of potential wives from poor countries. Once here, the typical mail-order wife is isolated; many are physically abused.
More than half of the women interviewed for the study live in rural areas of Canada; 49 per cent of them are 10 to 20 years younger than their husbands.
The study looked at the lives of 40 women in five provinces and found that most are unhappy in their marriages. One woman told of coming to Canada after exchanging letters with her future husband, but discovered when it was too late that he was violent.
"I hope that someday I'll have the courage to leave my husband," she told researchers.
"[For these women]it's essentially like marrying a stranger," said Ning Alcuitas-Imperial, one of the researchers.
"If you come from a poor country, there is no choice," said Cecilia Diocson, founder of the centre.
Caroline Alphonso