Losing Your Advantage
The other weekend while tending to my stall in a flea market on the outskirts of town, I witnessed a sixty something local man with what had to be his young, teenage bride from the Philippines. She was walking from vendor to vendor while he followed her pushing a baby stroller with what must have been their baby.
Now, I'm not a prude. It's cool with me if the older guy wants to be a baby daddy, but he's at least 60 and she must have been legal age but looked 15 or maybe 16. (Many Asian women look younger than their actual age, at least to me.) And she was hot. I'm talking footsteps smoking where she walked, lava hot!
Good for him, right? Live life to its fullest and all that. But the young bucks were stopping and staring. He had brought a doe deer into the den of flea market coyotes. I descretely watched, but I would never do anything to break up a family or hurt an old man.
Anyway, the old guy didn't look very wealthy. He wore work clothes and was slightly bent over from what I suppose was a lifetime of hard work. (Once a manager of a car lot told me that a farmer pulled wads of money out of his overalls and paid cash for a new pickup truck, so who knows what a guy's really worth.) If the old man still has to work for a living then he has to leave his beautiful bride all alone and she has all day to consider her options, which are many. Good luck, ole' timer. You're going to need it.
This weekend I encountered almost the same situation with a fifty something year old guy and probably a thirty year old, Asian woman also from the Philippines. They were walking in the mall and the man was pushing a baby stroller. But this guy married a pleasantly plump, not fat, average looking lady. Nobody would walk through fire for her, but she was cute enough and just the right thickness for great lovemaking. I think this guy has a much better chance at a long lasting marriage than the first guy. But I could be wrong.
My point in all this rambling is that when you bring a bride back to America from one of the poorer Asian countries, you lose the advantage you had in getting her in the first place. Your new bride can take half your stuff if she takes a mind to. That tropical beauty can make you pay child support until your children reach eighteen years old and maybe even college tuition. And what about spousal support? She can sleep with every man in town, and you still have to pay her every month as long as she doesn't remarry.
Alright, let's say you are one smart dude. You get her a lawyer before you marry her who speaks Tagalog or Thai or whatever. She signs an air-tight prenuptual agreement. So, you are protected, right? Wrong! What judge in the USA is going to enforce a contract against a young, exploited girl married to a sixty year old, dirty man? (The judge's opinion, not mine.)
Not your gal, your lady is special. She would never leave you or cheat on you. She has old fashioned family values that still exist in the Far East. Maybe,… but will she retain those values after she's exposed to American daytime television? When she is shopping and a fellow Filipino talks to her in their common language and tells her what a loser you are and how she should trade up, will she listen? When Captain Studly decides he wants a piece of that, will she surrender to an abs six pack and a thick head of hair? Are you sure?
Don't forget that you are a bad, evil man that the government has passed all kinds of laws to keep you in check. Ms. Boxer got a law passed that makes it illegal to marry someone you meet on the Internet without actually traveling to their country and meeting them in person. No more ''mail order brides'', you bad man. George Bush signed that one into law. Bush also signed a bill that makes United States law follow you all across the world in every country. Basically, you are owned by America and break any American law in let's say China then you could face American jail even if said act is perfectly legal in China. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Maybe, you've had enough. You are going to take all your money, move to Manila, and apply for Philippine citizenship. First off, you'll never become a full citizen with all the rights of a born native in most countries that I've read about, exception being the United States of America. Secondly, thanks to Representative Charley Wrangle who attached it to a bill, if you give up your United States citizenship then you are subject to a fifty percent tax on all your assets. It's true! Plus, the IRS expects you to still pay income tax for ten years after ditching your citizenship. Again, too crazy to be true, but it is!
As I write this, the Philippine government is cracking down on "human trafficing" i.e. the police raid a bar that has hookers in it, rescue the women, put it all on television, and tell Washington to send more foreign aid. And for being such good world citizens and protecting legal age prostitutes from bad, evil men the current administration will send them hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to them for a job well done. Yahoo!!
As a side note, an American cannot take over $100 in coinage out of the USA. It is illegal! Also, try taking over $10,000 out of America in cash, and you may end up being raped in a federal prison. Yes, prison same sex rape happens all the time and most goes unreported. Isn't it great to have so much freedom?
Now that I've no doubt been added to a list on some government database, back on topic. Your ability to fly to the other side of the planet and find the love of your life is based on your having more buying power than the local populace in let's say Thailand. But what happens when one of your dollars is worth one Thai baht? Suddenly, you aren't worth anymore than a Bangkok taxi cab driver. Do you really think that Thai beauty is going to like you more than the local dude who speaks her language, is her same age, and shares a common heritage?
Like lots of men, I dream of retiring one day to a tropical paradise in the Far East. But that may be a pipe dream. The dollars, euros, and pounds piled in your bank accounts seem to lose value every day. Governments claim little or no inflation while the price of bread rises constantly. If you have gold bricks or silver coins, they just sit there not making any more money for your old age. (Their dollar value may rise but they only store wealth against inflation. They don't make you any wealthier than you were when you bought them.)
Even in the poorest state of the United States of America, Mississippi, there is a definite trend of men traveling to Asia to find their bride. Ten years ago, you would almost never see a local guy with a foreign bride. Now, it has to be a big percentage of marriages, especially among older men. And good for them. With the local women acting like bullies and looking like hippos, there aren't many good options. Damned if you do; damned if you don't.
Stickman's thoughts:
I love what you say at the end – damned if you do, damned if you don't. SO TRUE!
