Byline: STEPHANIE EARLS STAFF WRITER
Michael Puzulis will tell you the American dating scene drove him to it.
It was the mid-90s. His first marriage had ended in divorce, and he was convinced the women he subsequently went out with were only after him for the money they thought he had.
So there he was, slipping deeper into his 40s, living alone in a tidy split-level on a swatch of creek-side real estate in East Berne. He worked nonstop: a full-time day job topped off by bartending and landscaping on nights and weekends. He'd soon built up a small savings, enough to start planning for the family he desperately wanted.
But by then, he hadn't had a real date in three years. No dating meant no romance, no first kiss, no marriage, no family. Or did it?
A simpler, more efficient option greeted him within the pages of the spring 1997 issue of Anastasia magazine ``The Russian-American Connection,'' an intercontinental matchmaking agency run by a former mail-order bride now living in Maine.
Puzulis grabbed his pen, and his credit card, and he went a'courting.
Like thousands of American men each year, Puzulis was banking that a foreign partner a ``mail-order bride'' might be able to give him the life he thought he deserved.
The term mail-order bride is technically a misnomer, since most couples exchange letters, talk and meet face to face which, incidentally, is required by law in the U.S. well before wedlock.
But whether for love, or green cards, or both, the business of international matchmaking for profit and wedlock is a controversial one. It is an industry that traffics in stereotypes and oversimplifications, and that feeds on hope. It is the puff plot of romance novels and the sinister story behind the headlines. It is undoubtedly the source of many happy unions and fulfilled lives, too.
``There are nice love stories and there are some gross abuses,'' said Jill Nagy, a Troy lawyer whose practice concentrates on immigration law. ``I think it's hard to tell, for me, and sometimes for immigration officials, what is a legitimate relationship and what isn't.
``Of course, they may enter into the relationship in good faith and have underestimated the difficulties of an international marriage,'' she added.
A booming business
Perhaps the only aspect of the issue that's beyond debate is this: With the growth of the Internet, the industry is booming. In the last official tally, in 1999, the since-renamed Immigration and Naturalization Service found more than 200 such matchmaking agencies operating in the United States. Today, more than quadruple that number claim to help pair American men with women from mostly Third World countries, most frequently China, Southeast Asia and the nations of the former Soviet Union.
And they're doing mad business.
Though there's no official word on exactly how many women were brought to the U.S. through the efforts of matchmaking services, in the 2003 fiscal year the U.S. issued a total of 25,304 fiance(e) visas to foreign nationals, giving them 90 days to tie the knot here or return home. Of those, 6,627 went to citizens of Vietnam and the Philippines.
The biggest growth in numbers over the years, however, has been seen in fiance(e) visas to citizens of the former Soviet Union. In the last fiscal year, Russian nationals were issued 1,559 U.S. visas for the expressed purpose of marriage, compared to a mere 228 in 1993 and a whopping 5,000-plus in the two years before the post-9/11 border tightening. Foreign nationals can obtain permanent residency status after marriage, and then, after three years of wedlock, can seek American citizenship.
The possibility of fraud in this process, however, is ``a pretty big problem,'' said Barbara Brenner, a partner at Copland and Brenner in Latham who handles immigration law. ``When you have a relationship between people who are claiming the relationship is based on mutual love and affection, then the agency needs to get inside the heads of the people involved through the documents they present, and what's gathered during the interview process. Unfortunately, there are some people who are able to get through the system who are not actually eligible.''
Given an Internet connection and a few keystrokes, American men of any age, shape and all but the most scanty income level can view catalogs of potential brides from all over the globe who offer ``traditional'' values, who are, according to one West Indies-based matchmaking agency that specializes in Eastern European women, ``unspoiled by feminism'' and who are eager to cater to every masculine need for only the smallest of returns.
``The Russian woman's attitude about herself is feminine. She expects to be treated as a lady, she is the weaker gender and knows it,'' extols Chanceforlove.com.
At A Foreign Affair, a Phoenix-based agency that claims to average seven engagements a day, American men can shell out around $3,500 for 10-to-12-day romance tours to places like St. Petersburgh and Kiev. There, they participate in whirlwind introduction socials with the ``largest foreign women-to-men ratios in the industry,'' according to the company's Web site.
Accompanying the pitches are, invariably, photos. Lots of photos. Fuzzy-edged glamour shots of pouty-lipped women sporting daring decolletages.
Puzulis equated choosing potential mates from the Anastasia catalog to being ``a kid in a candy store'' a not uncommon description of the process.
But a whimsical spin isn't what Barbara Jancar-Webster, an author, retired college professor and lecturer in world politics who lives in Chestertown, Warren County, sees when she considers the industry as a whole. It is a mostly unregulated industry that, among other ills, provided the backdrop to a 2000 killing, in Washington state, of a 20-year-old Kyrgyzstan woman by her estranged husband, who'd been accused of abusing a previous mail-order bride. That killing prompted the introduction of a pending congressional act that would require agencies to disclose grooms' criminal backgrounds to prospective international brides.
``Look at the pictures on the Internet, all these women are posing in sexy positions, not like they're saying `I'm a homemaker or a computer programmer and I want a man.' They're selling their sexual wares,'' said Jancar-Webster, who's researched the international sex trade and who's active with the Albany-Tula Alliance, a sister city program between the Capital Region and the Tula Region of Russia.
The overlap between sexual slavery and mail-order brides, she said, is too dangerous to ignore. Even if a union is initially in earnest, a bride is in jeopardy: Stuck with no support network and isolated by a language barrier, with no driver's license and at risk for depression. Or worse.
``Say they come here, they get married, then the husband decides `Hey, I want to go to Las Vegas and have you work there.' What's she going to do?'' Jancar-Webster said.
But the potential, titillating threats to brides may unfairly distort an industry that's mostly about happy, everybody-wins outcomes, say others.
For 38-year-old Queensbury resident Fred McNeill, a soft-spoken, divorced father raising a teenage daughter, international matchmaking was a last, best hope.
``I was a single dad, working a three-tiered shift as a truck driver. I was completely removed from the social scene,'' McNeill said. ``I'm a very simple guy. I'm not going to set the world on fire. I have no mansion, but I do own my own house. I always thought I'm the kind of person who's all right as a single guy, but I can't stand it.''
In March, McNeill and his 13-year-old daughter, Stephanie, traveled to the Ukraine to meet Luba, the 40-year-old woman with whom McNeill began corresponding the previous year. McNeill proposed two days into the visit. Today, he and Stephanie are awaiting the official OK to bring Luba to the States.
``I was really excited, and was really happy he found her,'' said Stephanie, who's looking forward to helping her future stepmom learn English. ``We're probably going to be doing things a lot different, the three of us, but I'm really glad it happened.''
Happy stories are the ones too rarely highlighted when it comes to mail-order brides, said Lynn Visson, a New York City-based writer, interpreter and professor, and author of ``Wedded Strangers: The Challenges of Russian-American Marriages'' ($14.95, Hippocrene Books, 296 pages).
The INS study from 1999 found that the men seeking foreign brides were, on average, white, well-educated, conservative and financially successful. Such men, Visson said, are simply seeking a mate to fit an established, comfortable lifestyle. Nothing sleazy about it.
``On average, these men are 33 to 43, maybe a computer geek who one day wakes up and says `Where's my family?' Then someone at work walks in with a gorgeous blonde on their arm, and they think `They can do it, why can't I do it?' Visson said. ``What they like about Russian women is they are pretty, they are well groomed, they think it's nice to please men. They want to be wives and mothers. Their first thing isn't me-me-me, my career,'' she said.
But such assumptions also can lead to trouble.
``(Men) make the mistake that feminine means pliable, and wishy-washy,'' said Visson, who is of Russian descent and is married to a Russian man. ``Make no mistake. They are strong, and strong-minded women.''
Good match, good life
In the mid-90s, Svetlana Bogomozova was single and in her late 20s. A trained geologist whose company had shut down, she was scrounging out a living selling foreign merchandise at city markets in the bustling metropolis of Volgograd, Russia, formerly the city of Stalingrad.
She was a knockout, with long dark hair and a model's figure. And like most of the Russian women she knew, Svetlana, the daughter of an alcoholic father, wanted a husband who didn't drink or smoke, who would be faithful and who wanted children. But finding a single man much less one who fit her exacting criteria was turning out to be more than a challenge.
A girlfriend who'd worked with an international matchmaking service suggested Svetlana try looking for an American sweetheart instead. ``She said `Look how difficult life is here. I found my American this way,' Svetlana said.
Her photo and bio in Anastasia drew well over 100 letters. Michael Puzulis' letters stood out, though. He was more than a decade her senior, but Svetlana found his photos handsome, his letters flattering and sweet. For two years, they wrote back and forth. Then, in 1998, Puzulis spent his savings to fly to Russia to meet Svetlana for the first time. Love was confirmed. They got engaged, and early the following year, Michael entered and won a local radio contest that provided the cash to bring Svetlana to the States. They were married soon afterward.
Today, Svetlana, 37, and Michael, now 51, have two young daughters, Valentina and Michelle. Svetlana, who recently got her driver's license, handles the household: cooking, cleaning and children, as well as helping to maintain the couple's thriving backyard business, Helderberg Exotic Cats, which breeds and sells Bengal and Siamese cats. Michael is healing from knee surgery.
Svetlana said, her English deeply sculpted by accent, that though coming to the U.S. was a scary decision, she now has her dream life. She's learned to speak her husband's language, but is teaching her daughters Russian. The satellite TV even picks up a Russian cartoon channel.
``I have a 100 percent happy family,'' she said.
Now, she's hoping to extend such a life to the loved ones she left behind. Last year, she and Michael started the Russian Bridal Connection, a small-scale matchmaking service initially set up to pair Svetlana's friends and relatives with American men from the Capital Region. Svetlana's cousin met and married a Lake George man through the service.
So far, roughly 50 couples have begun corresponding through the Puzulis' agency, which charges an initial $35 fee and tacks on additional amounts for things like translations, which Svetlana handles. Three couples have wed, half a dozen more are heading that way, while several more relationships have failed to get off the ground. So it goes.
Though there are no criminal background checks of potential grooms, Michael Puzulis said he and Svetlana carefully screen men, and assess their commitment level, before allowing them to pick from their family-Bible-thick photo album of roughly 100 bachelorettes.
Michael and Svetlana try to pair up couples they think will work, who are ``in the same league,'' intellectually or physically. Sometimes it means coming right out and telling a two he's a two, and he's got no chance of landing a 10.
The laws of attraction do not always shatter under the wheels of desperation.
``The women, they may be in Russia,'' Puzulis said, ``but they don't want to go from a bad situation to a worse one.''
Stephanie Earls can be reached at 454-5761 or at searls@timesunion.com.
CAPTION(S):
Cindy Schultz/Times Union PICK A WIFE, any wife. After meeting husband Michael Puzulis, right, through an international matchmaking service, Russian native Svetlana Puzulis, left, helped start up a similar, small-scale agency to pair her friends and family back in Russia with Capital Region men. Here, at the couple's East Berne home, 4-year-old daughter Valentina displays a photo album with more than 100 Russian bachelorettes in search of American partners. BUT IS IT SAFE? Retired world politics professor and lecturer Barbara Jancar-Webster, a Chestertown resident who has written several books about women living under communism, worries that mail-order bride arrangements can be risky for unsuspecting women.
WWW.CHANCEFORLOVE.COM CHANCE FOR LOVE'S web site features profiles from a variety of ``marriage minded'' Russian women.
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