Stickman Readers' Submissions March 26th, 2011

FactChecker: “My Thai Wife Experience” by NV

In this baffling submission, the author puts forward a sad story about how his Thai wife cast a black magic spell on him and
ruined his life and his family. This is a bit hard to swallow, not just for the incredible dragon lady who is his wife, but for some of the other “facts” about immigration and divorce in America.

First, he claims his wife is here in America on a sponsored visa from a family in Montana. Well, anyone can sponsor a visitor visa but it’s usually for close friends or family members. Was his wife close to this family? Then he states
it was a work visa. Now that’s a way different situation but as long as the employer still needs the foreign employee for work then there shouldn’t be a problem. Why, really, was the visa expiring? Anyway, her chances of being deported
on an expired visa in Montana would have been slim to none. Unless, of course, she stood naked in front of the federal courthouse in Helena screaming “I am here illegally and I demand justice”. Certainly, she wouldn’t have
attempted this act in winter time as nobody is that crazy, yet her panicked reaction to losing her visa is just not very plausible.

He Clinic Bangkok

But, let’s not get too hung up on this question and accept that her (whatever) visa was expiring. Getting married can allow her to stay in the country but she has to file for permanent residency almost immediately. Just writing a letter
to immigration is not going to cut it as she would still be vulnerable. This application can be a lengthy process of two or more years, depending on the circumstances, and involves the filing of many forms, photographs, and signed statements.
This process culminates in a grueling interview designed to trip up even the best rehearsed fakers. Our author would have to have been not just a willing partner in this scam, but a trusted accomplice. Let’s assume the author, for brevity,
decided to leave out this part of story as later on he goes on to say he sponsored her for citizenship; an almost impossible task unless she had already attained permanent residency.

But let’s keep to the order of the story. Next, we hear about their having an anchor baby, which according to urban legend (and Fox News) allows the mother to stay in the country indefinitely. Absolutely not true. American citizens
have to be 21 years old before they can sponsor anyone else to be a citizen (including newly minted citizens) and without that visa, mommy can still be deported. Besides, why did she need another sponsor? She was already married to the author
who was sponsoring her for a green card. I don’t doubt they had a daughter but if his wife was as smart a cookie as he claims, then she would know these facts. I suspect they had a child because they wanted one and were having regular unprotected
sex, nothing more.

Now comes the yarn about citizenship. The author claims that wifey came to him on the day of her 10th year anniversary in America wanting her citizenship. Well, the rule is 5 years residency without problems, like being here illegally, hence
the requirement for a green card. Plus, there are English and American history tests in the process along with a lengthy interview. Did the author sleepwalk through all this?

CBD bangkok

The next whopper was her threats to leave the country with their child such that he would never see them again. His wife, a woman so desperate for American citizenship that she lied and cheated until she got it, decides to leave that behind
and take her American citizen child with her to (assuming) Thailand. The likelihood that he would never recover his child is near zero as they were married in America and the child was an American citizen. The American embassy would have had a
field day in Thai courts to repatriate as least his child back to the US.

But there is so much more poppycock to this submission, like: the Army getting involved in family matters (forcing him to return a car), cops serving divorce papers (private companies do that and they don’t have to do it in person),
keeping a shared bank account open after each party had served divorce papers on each other, etc., etc. In fact, near the end of the story the author has a little trouble with his timeline. He asks for a divorce in 2009 and then is deployed overseas
for one year. Then he returns in 2009 to find the apartment cleaned out. Shocker, but wouldn’t the author have had to ask for a divorce Jan. 1, deployed Jan. 2 and returned Dec. 31? This seems an unlikely scenario to me.

But still staying with the timeline, he asks for a divorce, she files a restraining order, he’s deployed, and an embarrassing staged event happens such that the divorce judge awards everything he owns to his wife. Wait; what was that
event? I wish the author would have described it so others could be on the lookout for it, because for the life of me, I can’t imagine what it would have been. Did the child claim she was “touched” by her daddy or some other
atrocity? If so, then a police report would have been filed and the incident investigated, not presented as evidence after the fact in a divorce hearing. If she did, his daughter would have been subjected to a detailed cross examination in front
of a very skeptical judge. I doubt if even Judge Gloria Steinem would have believed the story. After the hearing, the author claims he lost custody of his child. The courts will only take away custody if a parent is not able to meet a child's
basic needs or runs the risk of injuring the child; hardly the case with a seemingly normal man with a solid job in the military. And how could she take away his life insurance? I suspect the court ordered him to make his wife the beneficiary
while his child was under 18; hardly a ludicrous request seeing how his child could be without his support if the author was killed in action. Again, is this really another made-for Fox News story about liberal judges stomping on the rights of
honest white males?

The last factoid this author presents is how his wife used a “love potion” on him during their marriage to control him. This may be the most important part of the story as it explains his dead-headedness through 15 years of
marriage. (Personally, I have been under the effects of "Jasmine Fever" for some time, but that's another story.) It also tests the reader’s credulity such that if you believe in love potions, then the rest of the story makes
perfect sense. In either case, the fact that a trained Army nurse would believe in love potions is libelous to both the Army and the nursing profession, both of which I highly regard. In my case, though, I wish I did believe in potions as using
one now would have been the only way I could believe any part of this story.

wonderland clinic

* By the way, I normally would have first sent this missive in an email to the author, but alas, he forgot to include his email in the submission.



Stickman's
thoughts:

I guess that the fellow was in the dark about a lot of stuff. I hate going into anything without understanding all of the intricacies of it, be it buying a new cricket bat, to arranging a new Internet provider to applying for a visa to visit a foreign country. The author of the original submission struck me as someone who simply didn't do his homework and really didn't understand things very well. That he believes the black magic stuff suggests a degree of gullibility too – although two readers have emailed me in response to my comments about that suggesting that it is real….

nana plaza