What is IMBRA?
“The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005, also known as IMBRA, is a law that was enacted to reduce abuse of marriage-based visa recipients. It adds a few safeguards to the screening process that are intended to protect both the visa applicant and U.S. petitioner.”
-Rapid Visa
For more information about IMBRA, you may view or download the whole Violence Against Women Law of 2005 and proceed to 119 STAT SEC. 833. Domestic Violence Information and Resources for Immigrants and Regulation of International Marriage Brokers on page 112.
What exactly defines an international marriage broker?
According to US law, an International Marriage Broker’s primary business goal is to provide services for dating and matchmaking specifically between US citizens and foreign nationals by providing personal contact information or facilitating communication between individuals.
Filipinos2Meet is founded and currently being operated by 2Meet Media Group. which is based in Germany. Filipinos2Meet has members from the USA but is not considered as an International marriage broker since the whole business model revolves around making singles from all over the world connect and make friends on a safe platform. It does charge rates to users regardless of age and/or citizenship. Finally, Filipinos2Meet does not disclose any of its users’ contact information to anyone. That would depend entirely on the users if they would want to make contact outside of the website or not.
Filipinos2Meet holds the idea that marriage is a sacred bond between two people. We aspire to be a bridge for like-minded people to meet at our site and connect. We, however, do not try to match our members up for marriage. Instead, we encourage them to be friends first and steps further from that are up to the two parties.
To provide a safe platform for our users, we do screen our members and disable accounts which we think are dishonest, offending, and do not adhere to website policies.
While we do suggest members whom they’ll likely want to be friends with, we don’t recommend whom they should marry regardless of gender, age or nationality. We do however offer tips and advice on how to use the platform to search for particular members and make friends. The decision whether to meet people through our site rests entirely on the users’ decision. Our main function is to be a platform for people to meet as friends first. Anything beyond that would be the user’s responsibility.
In the event that you as a US Citizen would apply for a fiancé/spousal visa, you might be questioned if you and your partner met through a marriage broker. As mentioned above, Filipinos2Meet is not a marriage broker and does not recommend its users whom to marry, therefore your answer should be No. If questioned specifically where you met, you can and should state that you both met at Filipinos2Meet.com. But for further clarification, we highly encourage that you consult with your lawyer.
If you happen to meet someone on Filipinos2Meet and consider developing a relationship with them, we highly encourage that you do background research on them, most especially if they’re a citizen from another country. We highly recommend you contact the appropriate government office or your personal attorney about the technicalities of applying for a visa before getting engaged or married.