Domestic dispute turns into international affair 
Maryland dispute illustrates legal perils for mail-order brides 

By David Cho 
The Washington Post, July 8, 2001, Page C1 


Siyi Ming left Shanghai in July 1997 for the promise of love, a 
family and a new life in America. She could not have imagined that, 
four years later, she'd wind up in a detention cell on Maryland's 
Eastern Shore -- jailed not for a crime but for a marriage gone badly 
awry. 

Her husband, John Schultz, wants to send her back to China, accusing 
her of using him to get to the United States. She says she was the 
one who was used, from the moment she replied to a newspaper ad 
Schultz had placed seeking an "oriental bride." 

The two corresponded for a few months and then Schultz, a Crisfield 
landlord who also serves on the town zoning board, traveled to China 
to meet her parents. Shortly after, she followed him to the United 
States, having received a temporary alien spouse visa. A few weeks 
later, on Aug. 17, 1997, they wed. She was 25; he was 52. It was his 
fourth marriage and her first. 

If Siyi Ming Schultz took a big risk in emigrating to a foreign land, 
her husband seemingly took little. She didn't know it at the time, 
but the law provided him with a way to send her back to China in the 
event their union didn't pan out: He could refuse to sponsor her 
application for permanent residency. 

Last year, with the relationship having turned bitter and caustic, 
John Schultz did just that, withdrawing his support for his wife's 
green-card application and filing for divorce. Now he wants her 
deported, away from him and the couple's nearly 3-year-old son. 

She has accused her husband of physical and mental abuse -- which he 
denies -- and is seeking to stay in this country. 

After three missed immigration hearings -- Siyi Ming Schultz said she 
never got the notices -- Immigration and Naturalization Service 
officials took her into custody June 4. She spent 30 days in the 
Wicomico County jail until her release Tuesday, when the agency 
agreed to reopen her case. 

Each year, more than 100,000 people arrive in the United States 
holding alien spouse visas. As many as 6,000 are mail-order brides. 

Many of the arranged marriages do go on happily ever after; but in 
cases where they don't, U.S. immigration law inadvertently empowers 
U.S. citizens to send their foreign spouses packing, INS officials 
and legal analysts say, by allowing them not to sign off on permanent 
residency status for their mates. 

In 1994, recognizing that the provision was subject to misuse, 
lawmakers amended the language, allowing alien spouse visa-holders to 
seek permanent resident status on their own in some cases -- if their 
partner had been abusive, for example, or had died. 

Robert Scholes, a retired University of Florida professor hired by 
the INS a few years ago to study the mail-order bride phenomenon, 
said the original wording of the provision, which also requires 
spouses to be married at least two years before permanent residency 
can be sought, was intended to make it more difficult for foreigners 
to use a sham marriage to obtain a green card. 

But legislators did not foresee how the law would be misused, Scholes 
said. "What the husbands are getting . . . is a return on the 
marriage." 

In fact, in a 1999 report to Congress on international matchmaking 
groups, the INS expressed concern that "the male customer holds both 
real and imagined power to allow a bride to enter the United States 
lawfully and to threaten deportation once she is in the United 
States." 

Last year, approximately 3,400 women with alien spouse visas claimed 
that their U.S.-citizen husbands were abusive, said Eyleen Schmidt, 
an INS spokeswoman. About 3,000 successfully obtained a green card 
without their spouse's sponsorship. 

"Some have been held hostage under the INS law," Schmidt said. "The 
husbands have been telling them, 'I'm going to make INS deport you.' 
They spend so long fearing the INS that it makes it difficult to 
reach out to them." 

Abuse of the system can go the other way, too, the INS points out. 
"There is no question that many of the alien women who advertise for 
U.S. husbands are far more interested in gaining permanent resident 
alien status than in gaining a good marriage," the 1999 report said. 

Proving marriage fraud is difficult: Of the 1,800 marriages the INS 
reviewed last year, only 38 of the 52 couples charged were convicted 
of fraud in federal court, Schmidt said. 

Neither the INS nor the Justice Department keeps statistics on the 
frequency of domestic violence in arranged marriages, but Scholes, 
the mail-order bride researcher, believes the rate is high, partly 
because the expectations on either side are often vastly different. 

In most cases, he said, the men are seeking women with traditional 
values and expect them to stay home and devote themselves to 
domesticity. They look overseas, believing that foreign women are 
easier to control, he said. But these women may have multiple 
motivations, mixing their feelings for their spouse with a desire to 
better themselves in their newly adopted country. 

Often, Scholes said, the man and woman are at different places in 
their lives: The age gap is commonly 20 years or more, he said, with 
most mail-order brides still in their twenties. 

Control issues were central to the dissolution of the Schultzes' 
relationship, Siyi Ming Schultz said in a recent jailhouse interview. 
"He never let me out. He always wanted me to stay home and cook," she 
said. "I was happy to do those things, but I wanted to go out, too. 
But he refused. He was always afraid I would meet somebody else. . . . 

"He would always threaten me: 'If you don't do what I say, I'm not 
going to sign your green card, I'm going to send you back to China,' 
" she said. 

John Schultz disputes that, saying, "I am the one who is being 
manipulated." In dozens of letters to the INS, he said that his wife 
used their marriage only to obtain a green card. 

"Nobody knows but God what she put me through," he said. "She has a 
temper like there's no tomorrow. She knows the system, she knows how 
to manipulate and portray herself as a victim, sitting in jail. . . . 
But God knows I am the real victim of domestic violence." 

On Dec. 11, during one of their many fights, Siyi Ming Schultz threw 
a pot of hot soup on her husband's arm. She admits this but said she 
was provoked when he hit her in the head with a bottle of lotion. 

He disputes that he hit her first. 

She called the police, only to find herself charged with assault. A 
conviction in the case, which goes to trial later this month, would 
hurt her deportation case, said her attorney, John H. Doud. 

The couple's divorce action is scheduled to be heard in court July 23 
in Salisbury, Md. Caught in the middle is their son, William, who 
will turn 3 one week later. 

John Schultz has temporary custody of the child, pending the divorce 
hearing. He said his wife never tried to call the boy from jail, nor 
has she visited him since her release Tuesday. 

Siyi Ming Schultz, who is staying with a friend nearby, said she is 
afraid to visit for fear of running into her husband. 

Although she has no desire to return to China, she said, she had a 
better life there. She is fluent in three languages -- Chinese, 
Japanese and English -- and has a degree in economics from Kobe 
International University in Japan, she said, and was enrolled in 
intensive language training when she decided to respond to John 
Schultz's newspaper ad. 

Having grown up in the bustle of Shanghai, she found the chicken 
farms and cornfields that surround Crisfield a big letdown, she said, 
and still yearns for big-city life in America. Her parents in China 
are unaware of most of the problems she has had, she said, including 
her time in jail. 

"It's too late to regret everything that's been done," she said. "But 
I just want to tell all the women overseas, everywhere, that they 
should be careful when they come here. They need to know the person 
before they marry."