Out-of-Town Brides: International Marriage and Wife Abuse among Chinese Immigrants

OUT-OF-TOWN BRIDES: INTERNATIONAL MARRIAGE AND WIFE ABUSE AMONG CHINESE IMMIGRANTSDuring the mid-nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Chinese males came to the United States to work in the gold mines and on railroads (Barth, 1964). Since family members were not allowed to accompany them, there were very few Chinese women in the U.S. (McLeod, 1948). As a result, most of the sojourners relied on the booming vice industry that emerged in the "Chinese Quarter" as their only sexual outlet (Wilson, 1974; Martin, 1977; U.S. Senate, 1978). Only a few Chinese businessmen could bring their wives to the U.S. (Lee, 1960). Chinese communities in America came to be known as "Bachelor Societies" (Nee and Nee, 1986). In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted and most Chinese people were banned from entering the U.S. (Miller, 1960; Saxton, 1971).The repeal of the exclusion acts in 1943 and the passage of the War Brides Act in 1946 allowed Chinese males who served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II to apply for immigration visas for family members in China (Sung, 1979) or Chinese bachelors to travel to Hong Kong and Taiwan to find a bride (Sung, 1967). These two measures, along with the liberalization of immigration laws in the mid-1960s, which authorized many women from Hong Kong and Taiwan to immigrate here, caused the Chinese sex ratio in the U.S. to become more balanced (Tsai, 1986). Between 1950 and 1978, citizens from the People's Republic of China were not allowed to immigrate to America because the U.S. had no diplomatic ties with communist China.In 1978, the U.S. established a diplomatic relationship with China. Since then, people from China resumed their immigration to America (Zhou, 1992). Many of these newcomers were working-class bachelors. After three or four years of hard work in restaurants and garment factories, many saved enough money to return to China to find an "out-of-town bride" (a bride arriving in the U.S. from a foreign country through international marriage). Although there was a substantial increase in the total number of inter-racial marriages between Chinese and other ethnic groups in the 1970s and 1980s (Sung, 1990), many new and old Chinese immigrants still returned to China to marry. As a result, it is reported that the number of "out-of-town brides" in the U.S. increased considerably (China Times, November 9, 1990). According to official statistics, about 5,000 women from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan arrived in the U.S. annually as brides in 1988 and 1989 (Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1988; 1989).As the number of trans-Pacific marriages among the Chinese people increased, the media reported a surge in domestic violence and other family-related problems among Chinese immigrants (Mei Tung News, September 16, 1990; Sing Tao Jih Pao, September 27, 1990). Social service providers who work with Chinese families also indicated that many Chinese women, especially those from China, were abused by their spouses (Sing Tao Jih Pao, December 4, 1990). For instance, in 1990, the New York Asian Women's Center received more than 2,000 calls from battered Asian women (Howe, 1991). The Chinese Immigrant Association in Queens received more than 500 reports of spouse abuse in 1989 (Sing Tao Jih Pao, December 4, 1990). Social workers from the above two agencies found that many Chinese battered women were "out-of-town brides" from China (Herald Monthly, 1990). Also, according to the director of Project HELP, a program that deals with Asian victims of domestic violence in the New York Metropolitan area, during the fourth quarter of 1989, none of the program's new cases were related to immigration marriage. However, for the same quarter of 1990, all 13 new clients of the project were "out-of-town brides" from China.Despite the apparent increase in the number of Chinese female spouses seeking help, Chinese couples are rarely mentioned in the family relations or spouse assault literature. …