E-Mail-Order Bride Business: Legarda wants ‘unwanted alien’ tag on 2 Americans

Senate Majority Leader Loren Legarda has urged the Bureau of Immigration to blacklist two American nationals identified as the operators of US-based online mail-order bride companies preying on Filipino women.

Legarda identified the two US citizens as Larry Pendarvis and Delaney Davis, both of Florida, USA.

The two were named as the owners of World Class Service and The Davis Place International Internet Services, operators of three websites which Legarda said "exclusively and boldly sell Filipino women as brides and sex commodities."

"They should be declared as undesirable aliens and forever banned from entering the country," Legarda said in a statement.

"What they are doing may be perfectly legitimate in the US. But under Philippine laws, they are committing illicit and punishable acts," she said.

Legarda, meanwhile, welcomed the legal action taken by the Department of Tourism (DOT) against the online bride matching firms.

The DOT earlier filed complaints with the National Bureau of Investigation against the two firms for using the department’s logo in their websites in an apparent ploy to convince American and Filipino mate-hunters that their activities have the blessings of the Philippine government.

The two firms operate three Internet sites — www.filipina.com, www.filipinawife.com and www.filipinalady.com — which The STAR has exposed to be engaged in the matching of Filipino women with foreigners.

For a fee ranging from as low as $2 (P104) to as high as $60 (P3,120), the websites offer access to catalogues of hundreds of prospective Filipino brides.

The Philippine Anti-Mail-Order Bride Law penalizes a person or entity that carries on a business for the purpose of matching Filipino women for marriage to foreigners either on a mail-order basis or via personal introduction for a fee.

Under the law, offenders face from six to eight years’ imprisonment plus a fine of up to P20,000. If the offender is a foreigner, he or she faces deportation and may be barred from entering the country after service of sentence and payment of the fine.

The law was enacted in 1990 after dozens of Filipino women lured by mail-order bride advertisements were later found to have been forced into prostitution. Others ended up as battered wives or forced into into domestic labor.

Most of the victims came from poor provinces and lacked formal education.