Filipina Dreams: Filipina 101, 202 And 303 In One Volume

By Perry Gamsby

Everything you need to know in one handy volume if you are looking to find love and happiness in the arms of a Filipina. From how to meet them online or in person, how to detect a scammer and what to say in those first all important emails to the marriage process, immigration restrictions and much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: StreetWise Global
• Release date: Sep 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465785121

Book preview

Introduction

Filipina 101 – How To Meet The Filipina Of Your Dreams is a collaboration between myself and my beautiful Asawa (wife), Amelita. As such, the POV or point of view will vary between her speaking, me speaking or both of us speaking. We feel that since this is a very personal topic, we wanted to keep the style as personal as we could, so hopefully the critics will forgive us if we simply be ourselves and we just write as we speak.

Being yourself is the only way anyone commencing to meet their future spouse via this or any other media should be. Filipinas, at least those who make use of the internet to find a spouse, may not be the best educated although many of them are college graduates. They are mostly from the lower C and D social strata rather than the well off Bs and wealthy As. But this doesn’t mean they are not intelligent and clear on what they want in a life partner.

Make no mistake; Filipinas are more traditional than many western women when it comes to marriage. They are marrying for life, they do want families, they are looking for a man who acts like a man and treats them like a lady. They may come from a far more disadvantaged economical situation that you, but never think that means they will marry just any man who asks them.

They are more tolerant and even ‘blind’ when it comes to a man being older, overweight and less than perfect. They look beyond that but they demand more in leadership from their man as the head of the family than their liberated western sisters. There is someone for everyone in this world and in the Philippines, there may just be more than one beautiful, loving, loyal and devoted Filipina waiting to meet you.

This book is not the be all and end all on the subject of online introductions. It is based on our personal experience from both sides of the fence and our research with many friends, acquaintances and outright strangers. We both hope that you glean something more from this work at the end than you had when you started. If that something helps you find the happiness we share, then it was worth the effort.

Perry and Amelita Gamsby,

Talisay, Cebu, Philippines, 2005

Sydney, Australia, 2011

Part One - The Filipina And How To Find Her

Chapter 1

Why Would A Filipina Want You?

This is a valid question. Why would a young, beautiful woman in her late teens, early twenties want to contract the rest of her life to some guy like you? You are most likely over 40, overweight and getting over a recent divorce. You might even be in your sixties and we have friends in their seventies who have wives 50 years younger than they are.

The answers are fairly obvious once you understand the Filipina and the Philippines. First of all, don’t believe those stories that tell you how there are five women to every man here, it just seems that way. Have a look at the official census figures for 2004 below.

Year 2004

Men:15-19 – 4,014,772 , 20-24 – 3,569,421, 25-29 – 3,081,31725

Women:15-19 – 3,995,210, 20-24 – 3,545,552, 25-29 – 3,038,775

Philippine Census Figures

In each of the three age categories chosen there are more men then women, the latest figures maintain the same ratio, just more people for each group. If you visit the official web site (click the link above) you will see the figures are the same for every age group. There are more men then women in the Philippines.

Of course, if we look at those figures rationally, one could argue the numbers are pretty even in real terms. In other words every Filipina should be able to find a Filipino to catch and marry. So why do they choose foreigners?

Filipinas see foreign men as more stable and faithful. They consider an older man to be less likely to stray. Part of the culture here is that a married man may have one or more girlfriends or mistresses. They are known as Carreidas or Kiridas. It is a commonly held belief that this is tolerated as a part of the culture. The truth is the men tolerate it and the wives hate it. However, because this is a catholic dominated country there is no divorce and annulment is very expensive to attain. A woman would lose nearly all she has including her children if she made a fuss and her husband was more powerful than she.

He could pay the judge to award him the children, who he would hand over to his mother to raise while he continues to live his life drinking with his friends and seeing his kiridas. There are few job opportunities for women over 25 here, just look at the Job Ads in the newspapers, they all state under 25, single, etc. Click Here For Philippine Newspapers

Filipino men at all levels of society engage in the kirida behaviour. There is a saying that for every P10,000 per month a man earns (about US$200) he should have one girlfriend as well as his wife. Many men have more than one family, considering themselves to be macho studs because they have fathered several children. Little thought is given to offering the mothers and children a proper family life as while it is a sin to be an adulterer the church ignores this common practice and forbids men and women to use contraception. It is easier to forgive than to try and change the practice and maybe lose a few parishioners and their tithe.

The earning capacity of the average Filipino man is far below that of the average foreigner. To the Filipino, all foreigners are kanos, or Amerikanos. Even if you are British, German or Australian and have never been to America. The Filipina’s logic is that if you can afford to come to the Philippines then you are rich. Much richer than the Filipino men in her barangay who can’t even afford jeepney fare into town.

This means that even a man with a modest income, blue collar job or small pension is financially more attractive than most Filipino men, especially those she will be considered able to marry. The Philippines is very class conscious and there is no way a domestic helper would ever marry the son of her employer if one were from the province and the other were rich land owners. He might take her to his bed, even father children by her but he would never marry her.

A lot of Filipinos harbour the macho man ideals familiar to many Latin societies where the catholic church held sway. They will sow their wild oats and then dump the poor girl as soon as she falls pregnant, yet of course wearing a condom is beneath their status as real men. There are millions of single parents in this country, yet the practice is to hand the child over to the grandparents who raise it as their own. The child grows up thinking its mother is its older sister. The paperwork is amended, even false baptismal certificates issued to continue the fantasy. The father moves on and impregnates some more naïve young girls before finally one may tie him down to marriage. Then he starts up again with a kirida. No wonder the Filipina looks elsewhere for her lifemate.

So, the two main reasons Filipinas marry foreigners, even those many years older than themselves, are financial security and fidelity. Women all over the world marry men for the same reasons. Of course they may love them dearly too, but why not fall in love with someone who will stay faithful and give you and your children a better life than someone who won’t? It is embarrassing for the Filipina to have her husband run around with other women. It is worse that her children go hungry while their father spends his paycheck on beer and other women. Of course, there are many faithful Filipino men who are good providers, but there are more than enough who are not to make the comparison valid.

To many Filipinas, western men look like the movie stars they see on TV. They all want to have children and they know if they have children from a foreigner the children will epitomize the ideals of Filipino beauty. Pale skin (like their Spanish and American colonial masters), long noses and fair hair (ditto).

You only have to watch a small town beauty pageant to see that the beautiful, dark skinned Malay-Filipina is not allowed to enter. Only if they are pale and look more Spanish or Chinese would they bother. The prejudice is that strong, it really is sad. If a Filipina, particularly a dark skinned girl from the province, marries a foreigner then her children will be pale and beautiful and she will be able to return to her barangay and show off her husband and family.

It is a proven fact that men marry someone who attracts them physically while women mostly overlook physical beauty and seek out a man who can provide them and their children with a good life. It is simply nature doing her thing and balancing things up. For many men who have been divorced and suffered at the hands of the western courts system, relax. Yes there are scammers out there. This book will help you detect them and avoid them, at the very least minimise the damage they may cause you. However, the vast majority of Filipinas are genuine, loving and marry FOR LIFE. Fil-Am marriages, or Fil-Foreigner, have a much higher success rate than any other combination.

There are horror stories of women snaring men, getting to the states then using the courts system to clean him out a second time in his life, but there are just as many stories of women suffering. Filipinas marrying men who seem to be nice guys until they get the girl back home. Then they turn her into a sex slave for themselves and their buddies and beat them mercilessly. It happens. But bad things can happen if the man marries a woman from his own country, or the Filipina marries a man she has known all her life in the barangay.

So why do Filipinas like to marry foreign men? Because we think you offer us a better life, will be more loving and faithful and less likely to stray and we know our children will be beautiful. Now ask yourself why do you want to marry a Filipina?

Chapter 2

The Penpal-Chatcam Phenomenon.

The original Mail Order Bride probably started hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. Some King or Emperor might have sent out messengers to tell his far flung kingdoms that he needed some fresh faces for his Harem. The lackeys in distant lands would have loaded up a caravan with a selection of the local beauties and travelled for months to the capital to see which ones would curry the King’s favour.

In the Wild West days men would actually choose a bride from catalogues sent out from the East full of suitable young ladies. These poor things would then travel for weeks as far west as the pioneers had forged to that date and meet their husbands-to-be in cattle towns, mining settlements and isolated farms.

In the last quarter of the 20th Century catalogue based introduction services enjoyed a resurgence in popularity which transferred smoothly to the data managing capabilities of the computer, allied to the communication connectivity of the web. A perfect combination to allow like minded people from opposite corners of the world to meet, communicate and even fall in love.

As rapidly as technological changes made printed catalogues obsolete with the introduction of online ‘catalogues’ and penpal websites, so too now we have chat cams and chat rooms. Many of these services are a form of ‘pornography’ or virtual prostitution with men paying for time to speak to chatcam girls wither by typing in text conversations or using a microphone and speakers, all the while watching the girl on her computer linked camera.

Some chatcam sites offer free interaction with the girls and invite the men to take the girl into a ‘private room’ so to speak. Here he has her to himself and is paying for this by the minute. As she gets a percentage of every dollar he spends it is in her best interests to keep him online for as long as possible.

Many of these web sites label the girls as ‘performers’ who do ‘shows’ and in effect this is correct. During such private shows the man masturbates as the girl dances for him, disrobes and anything else she is willing to do. Although accurate figures are not available due to the plethora of such sites it is not difficult to accept that there are thousands of such shows going on every day and night and not just with Filipinas. Women from every culture and country have discovered this lucrative and fairly easy way to make a decent living.

Some may argue it is no different to prostitution and I agree, for the man. He is the one that actually performs a sexual act, albeit on himself. The girl is as the web site copy claims, merely performing. It is very different to working in a bar as a GRO or Guest Relations Officer as the prostitutes are often titled. It is safer, cleaner and the girl doesn’t actually make any physical contact with her client. She has no risk of getting an infection or assaulted let alone pregnant. She does not have to take drugs to stay awake or help her have sex with men she may find repulsive. She spends her time in the comfort of her own room or a studio that simulates a bedroom and her biggest concern is boredom if there isn’t much traffic during her shift.

Many of the chatcam studios have been raided by the Philippines Police. It is a typical case of Filipino hypocritical behaviour because most of the time the raid occurs because the local police didn’t get a big enough pay off. Any suggestion it is because of breaches of morality laws is a joke given the endemic and systemic corruption that permeates every level of Filipino society from the top down. The smart girls work from home and so long as they tell nobody, nobody is the wiser. You can read all about this in the chapter ‘Cyber Girls’, written by an American who makes his living from managing several chat cam girls.

The other form of chatcam use is in the chat rooms open to all, such as those run by Yahoo and Hotmail amongst many others. These do not offer ‘private sessions’ although it is not unknown for girls to bare flesh at the request of their ‘boyfriends’ as I have witnessed when in an internet café emailing my wife one day in Manila.

Some of these chat rooms are ‘freelance’ affairs and others belong to penpal/introduction agency web sites. You must keep in mind that the recent IMBRA laws (applicable only to US citizens, see ‘Land Of The Free?’) allow major sites such as Yahoo Messenger to be exempt from the requirement of the man having to inform the woman of his previous history and so on. Even large introduction businesses are exempt also, the law only hits the little guys.

The main way Introduction or penpal sites seem to have gotten around IMBRA is to offer totally free services. They make their money by allowing advertising on their sites and offering additional services such as immigration assistance or the delivery of flowers and gifts or offer this eBook via our affiliate program.

Many women freelance and scam via chat rooms and chat cams. You can even view video clips warning you of this on You Tube. We cover scammers in the chapter ‘How To Detect A Scammer’ and we have updated the information included to cover the latest techniques they are using to make money from men via emails, chatcams and face to face.

Even though much of the interaction between Filipinas and Foreigner men has moved into the chat room and on camera, there are still many Filipinas, particularly the genuine ones, who still only communicate via email. You can still find one of these ladies via a web site introduction/penpal service and the good news is that thanks to MBRA, there are far more free sites out there than there ever used to be.

Chapter 3

Can You Fall In Love With A Penpal Profile?

Can someone really fall in love via a letter, email, chatcam or telephone call? Many think they have and if that is the case then they have indeed fallen in love. It is a state of mind after all and if they believe themselves to be in love then for that moment in time they are. It may not last long past the first few moments actually spent together, but it was as real at one time as any other emotion is.

Often people fall in love with the emotion of finding someone who listens to them, who seems to care about them and who may offer a solution to their loneliness. You shouldn’t fall in love or make any commitment before you meet in person, although many people have even proposed before they meet for the first time, that is the power of the internet.

We will advise you what to write in your emails so you can weed out the gold diggers and narrow things down to a select few. We always advise having more than one person to visit when you finally come to the Philippines. I met my husband when he was here meeting other women, we had never even corresponded once before we met in person.

Chapter 4

So Why Use An Internet Penpal Service?

Why the internet? Because it is fast and effective. In the old days a man would peruse a catalogue and send off a dozen letters, then wait for weeks for a reply or two. Then he would send a second letter and wait again. Turn around time between sending a letter and receiving a reply could be two, even three months. A couple could write for two years and only have exchanged half a dozen or so letters. Yet with the internet they can write that many in 24 hours.

The speed of communication means that everything happens so much faster these days. A couple who has corresponded for a month might know everything there is to know about each other. Emails quickly evolve to telephone calls, then daily SMS text messages. Modern 21st Century communications has speeded up the world we live in and made meeting a potential partner so much easier and faster.

However. You still need to meet face to face. It is a requirement of every western country’s immigration policy. It is also common sense and I have yet to meet a Filipina who would marry anyone they didn’t love or hadn’t met in person.

Chapter 5

What Are The Benefits Of Using A Penpal Service?

Many and none. It depends on the Penpal service and what you expect from them. Some services charge like wounded carabaos and give little to nothing, others provide very comprehensive services for very little expense, many of them may even be free. Like anything in life, you get what you pay for and nothing is free, at least nothing worthwhile.

To run a penpal service takes a server and servers cost money. Somebody pays so even the free sites are paid for by someone. Usually the annoying myriad of pop up ads and so on. Paid sites and domain names cost money also, as well as the services of whoever it is that uploads the details and keeps the site and profiles up to date. Even sites where the poster can post their own profile and so on requires someone to monitor the site.

You need to wade through the various sites on offer and there are hundreds of them to choose from. Click on this link to Google and type in Filipina Penpal then hit search. When I did it there were 32,400 hits. Filipina mail order bride came back with 143,000 hits so despite the fact few of us like the term; this is a common search keyword. Even if only 100 of the hits belong to reputable penpal sites, how many women do you think you will need to peruse to find a few worth emailing? The major benefit to using a penpal service is the speed and the variety. You are pretty well guaranteed you will be in contact with a Filipina within hours of sending off your first emails.

The reality is that there are tens of thousands of Filipinas who are actively searching for a foreigner to meet and marry. While the services can’t promise anything permanent they can state they are there to introduce people for the purpose of marriage, friendship or whatever. There are scammers out there and I will show you how to detect them and deal with them, but most Filipinas are very genuine.

Rest assured, if a Filipina has gone to the trouble to list her profile on the web, she is serious about finding a man. There are many ways to meet Filipinas but by far the most efficient in time, cost and effort has to be the internet penpal site. Like anything else, particularly if you pay anything for the contact details of any Filipinas, Caveat Emptor, let the buyer beware. Use common sense and standard internet security parameters as you would if buying from eBay or any online business.

Chapter 6

Land Of The Free?

The IMBRA (International Marriage Brokers Regulation Act) is a powerful US law that was allegedly introduced to protect foreign brides of US citizens following several tragic murders of Russian women. The following information is reproduced from the Wikipedia entry and fully complies with their reproduction rules.

IMBRA, the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 (Subtitle D of United States Public Law 109-162), is a United States federal statute that requires background checks for all marriage visa sponsors and limits serial visa applications. The impetus for its introduction was several high-profile cases (including the Susanna Blackwell case in 1995 and the Anastasia King case in 2000) in which foreign women had been abused and eventually murdered by the men who had used international marriage brokers to bring them to the United States. Several international marriage brokers challenged its constitutionality but the statute was upheld by a federal court in 2007. IMBRA has been the subject of controversy since its passage because of free-speech and identity theft concerns. Also controversial are the obligations it imposes on the international marriage broker industry, commonly referred to as the mail order bride industry.[4]

Legislative History

In 1990, the first federal provisions to help battered immigrant spouses were passed, followed in 1994 by more comprehensive protections contained in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), legislation that was reauthorized and expanded in 2000 and again in 2005. In 1996, a regulation responding to concerns about abuses was first imposed on the international marriage broker (IMB) industry by the Mail-Order Bride Act (8 U.S.C. §1375). In 1999, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service recommended that male IMB clients be screened and female IMB recruits be informed of their rights and resources if they are abused. Following these findings and recommendations, and motivated by some brutal high-profile murders of mail-order brides, several states enacted legislation to protect foreign women who meet their spouses through international matchmaking agencies from abusive marriages. In 2001, Washington State was the first to enact legislation to address the problem, followed by Texas,