From Rich Gosse, founder of the International Association of Dating Websites:
It is my sad duty to inform you that the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) was enacted by Congress and signed into law. It will go into effect on April 1, 2006. This law will be disastrous to those dating services that specialize in matching foreign women to American men as their primary business. The law requires mandatory criminal and marital background checks be performed on each American man, and that each foreign woman must receive and approve of this information before her email address can be released. There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of mainly mom and pop businesses in the U.S. that will now go under because of this ill-sighed legislation. Many of them were barely surviving before this draconian measure was approved by Congress. Please note that this legislation goes far beyond the legislation proposed by True.com that requires that online dating sites either do background checks or publish on their home pages, in large letters, that do not perform these checks. IMBRA makes these checks mandatory. If you own a dating website that does not specialize in foreign women meeting American men, you can relax, for now. IMBRA doesn’t affect you immediately. But this is just the first step in a very strong push nationally to mandate that all dating companies, including dating websites, require these expensive background checks. It is interesting to note that the giant online dating websites in the U.S. did not fight this legislation, since they were able to place an exception for them into the bill. This is very short-sighted. IMBRA is just a “foot in the door” of a concerted plan to require all dating services and websites to do mandatory background checks. To paraphrase Ernest Hemingway, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls–it tolls for everyone in the dating industry.” We lost this battle. Let’s not lose the war. I urge all of you to write to your representatives in Congress and President Bush asking for the repeal of IMBRA. Citizens Against Dating Discrimination (CADD) is leading the charge. You can visit them at www.online-dating-rights.com.
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