When looking to meet an Asian woman as a potential wife or life partner, there are 2 countries that lead the pack. One is the Philippines, the other is Thailand. Other Asian countries also are good, but tend to be a distant third.
Looking at the Philippines first simply because they have the longest history in the east meets west game, we can see both good and bad. Finding a Filipina wife got started at the end of World war II. Americans set up military bases there, and from the word go it was full speed ahead.
Back then there US immigration laws were very relaxed. Just get married and your wife could be sitting next to you on your trip home to the States. No need for filing forms, and huge fees. But there were some Filipina women who simply saw a love struck American as an easy ticket to the US. So the game was get married and when she arrived in the states she would just run and start a new life.
That behavior was so wide spread the US government eventually put into place a 2 year temporary Green card. So the true husband’s signature was needed in the 90 days before the 2 year mark to get that elusive permanent Green card. If that did not happen out would come the return to sender stamp and back to the Philippines she would go with the strong possibility of being banned from getting another US visa.
One of the things that made women from the Philippines so appealing was English. Although there were several dialects in the Philippines, English was a second language. Also most people from the Philippines were devout Catholics as a result of strong Spanish influence. The Spanish influence was so strong, that the Tagalog language is very similar to Spanish with many of the words being the same.
The down side was the family. They were mostly impoverished and saw someone in the family getting married to an American as money and only money. Every means in the book was used to get that money flowing. In some cases the Filipina wife put priority of her blood family ahead of her husband, and it does not take much to understand that amounts to big problems for the marriage.
No matter how much was given, it was never enough, and the endless midnight phone calls showed lack of caring by not taking into consideration the time difference. What made matters worse the phone calls were only asking for more money. That most certainly would eventually lead to the thought of ‘How did they ever survive before the American came along?’
Even when money was given with the best intent of it being seed money to start a profitable business, that money was often if not always squandered by the family and spent on beer, cigarettes, and gambling. Because of that second thoughts of getting married to a Filipina orphan started to be a viable option.
