So, are mail-order spouses illegal in the US? The short answer is no. It’s 100% legal to marry foreign women no matter where you meet them, be it a mail-order bride site, Instagram, or the streets of Bogota or Manila. Foreign brides can enter the US, get married to American citizens, and become both US permanent residents and US citizens after the marriage.
But that’s not all you need to know. Continue reading to learn more about the mail-order bride industry, why it’s 100% legit to marry foreign women, and how to do everything right. And you’ll also find the best, most popular, trusted, and legit mail-order bride websites here—we tested them all, and they are 100% worth your time.
Best mail-order brides & international dating sites
If you want to find a trusted and legit mail-order bride site, you can do your own research, analyze the reviews, and test the websites—this will take a week or so, but you’ll probably find it. Or, you can simply trust our top list. Each website here is tested, has thousands of real women, and is 100% legitimate.
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What laws affect mail-order brides?
Is it legal to mail-order a bride? The answer is 100% yes—and taking into account the fact that mail-order brides might be vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment by their potential husbands, the US protects them with such acts as VAWA and IMBRA.
Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
The IMBRA is aimed at protecting mail-order brides and foreign brides in general. This act was passed in 2005, and it protects immigrants from abuse by sharing such information as the criminal background of their potential husbands with them.
IMBRA’s purpose is to prevent both domestic violence (by informing and protecting mail-order brides) and human trafficking against foreign women. To prevent human trafficking, this act requires additional evidence from people who met through IMBs (International Marriage Brokers).
However, the bad news here is that IMBRA can make it even longer for you to bring your bride to the US. We don’t know how many human trafficking cases are prevented by IMBRA RFEs (requests for evidence), but we surely do know that a lot of men need to either provide evidence of their “bona fide” relationship or print the Terms of Service pages of their dating sites to prove these sites are not marriage brokers.
What are we talking about? IMBRA regulated marriage brokers, not regular/international dating sites, so if you get an RFE while applying for a visa, you’ll need to send them the ToS page of the dating site you were using. It’s simple, but it takes time, too, which becomes even more serious taking into account how long the K-1 processing time is.
International Marriage Brokerage Regulation Act (IMBRA)
The answer to the question “Are mail-order brides legal?” is “yes.” But what about human trafficking?
Some people think that the whole mail-order bride industry is actually human trafficking because, as they think, American men “order sex slaves” from poor countries. Well, if that were the case, it would definitely be human trafficking—because that’s what “ordering a slave” is, no doubt.
However, that’s not how the mail-order bride industry works. To bring a mail-order bride to the US, you have to chat with her for some time (usually around 2-3 months), meet her in person, make sure she likes you, propose to her, and offer her to move to your country. Mail-order brides are not paid for, well, being mail-order brides, and they are not brought to another country through manipulation or false promises.
They sign up on MOB sites because they want to. They chat with foreign men because they genuinely think foreign (Western) men make better husbands. They get married to foreign men because they fall in love with them. There’s no violence, manipulation, or false promises, which are the main indicators of human trafficking. It’s just dating, with all its pros and cons.
So, if your relationship is real and genuine, and your bride is in this relationship at her own will, you have nothing to worry about. In this case, your bride will be able to get a K-1 visa, which means you’ll be able to marry her after she arrives in the US. Right after that, she’ll be able to file Form I-485 and become a permanent resident, and three years later, she’ll be able to become a US citizen.
How to marry a mail-order bride
Is finding and marrying a mail-order bride real? The answer is “yes” again! Thousands of men from the US marry foreign women every single year, and you can be one of them, too. Here’s a short guide on how to do everything right.
Choose a trusted mail-order bride website.
Read the reviews carefully to choose only legit mail-order brides platforms—if you don’t, you’ll lose your time and money. There are many fake/scam websites, so you’ll have to analyze both expert and user reviews to spot such a platform. Read the next paragraph, we’ll explain how to do it right.
Meet your bride online and chat with her.
Be respectful, don’t rush, and use all the features offered by a mail-order bride site (typically, they offer much more than live chat).
Meet her in person, propose, and plan a wedding.
You’ll have to meet in person in order to get a visa later, and planning your wedding will definitely help to convince immigration officers your relationship is real.
Apply for a K-1 visa.
Make sure you’re eligible, collect all the documents needed, and make sure your annual income is at least 125% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines. Pay the fees.
Wait for it.
The K-1 processing time is around 15-18 months, and during this time, it’s not recommended for your bride to apply for a tourist visa, so she won’t be able to meet you in the US. You can meet her in her country, though.
Marry her in the US
You’ll have to marry her within 90 days of her arrival; otherwise, she’ll be deported.
How do you differentiate a legitimate mail-order bride site from a scam?
Now, when you know the answer to the question “Are mail-order spouses illegal,” you might think it’s really easy and fast—you just find a site, then find a girl, meet her, and bring her to the US.
Well, it’s not that easy. There are many potential problems at each step, even on the first one—finding a mail-order bride site.
The point is that many fake sites might look real but only have one purpose: to steal your money. Some of them steal your credit card information; others just make you pay to continue chatting with fake profiles created by the site’s team. The only difference is that in the first case, they’ll steal money from you, and in the second case, you’ll give them your money voluntarily.
Well, the good news is that spotting a scam mail-order bride site is pretty simple.
There are two main rules:
- Always read the reviews. Even if they buy fake user reviews, it’s very easy to spot them: they look unnatural, they are posted at the same time, and they always lack details not to mention screenshots or personal stories. Expert reviews are useful, too—usually, experts dig deep and can uncover something the users don’t notice.
- Pay attention to the profiles. Google their photos to make sure they are not used on other dating sites (it’s a 100% red flag). Take a look at how real the profiles are. Pay attention to how they communicate. Getting dozens of love messages right after registering on a dating site is a red flag, for example—especially if you have 0 photos and no profile description yet.
That’s all, basically. Of course, there might be some high-level scam websites with thousands of fake reviews and very detailed fake profiles that act like real women, but it sounds impossible. We’ve been working in the industry for more than 30 years (combined experience) and have reviewed more than 100 top sites from this niche—and we have never seen such platforms. So it’s more like a theoretical possibility rather than a real danger.
Bonus tip
Jacob Lucas
Dating Expert
Collect as much evidence as you can while dating a mail-order bride. Legal service providers can tell you more, but in short, the list looks like this:
- Text messages and emails printed
- Plane tickets
- Letters from family and friends who can confirm your relationship is real
- Skype logs
- Hotel stays/Airbnb reservations
- Photos of you and your bride (the photos should be labeled with the date, location, and names of everyone in them)
Without the evidence, you’ll have a very, very hard time explaining the nature of your relationship to the immigration officers. So, the answer to the question “Are mail-order brides legal in the US?” is “yes,” but remember that you’ll have to prove that your relationship is genuine in order to get your bride to the country.
