Cambodia Marriage Visas denieded

Some 1,759 marriage visas were issued by South Korea in 2007, up from just 72 in 2004, the report said. While no systematic exploitation was uncovered, several cases of abuse did raise a red flag with the government, said You Ay, secretary of state with the Women's Affairs Ministry.

"Seven women have returned from South Korea because they could not stand what happened to them there," You Ay told AFP. "The government has temporarily suspended all (paperwork) for Cambodia women to marry foreigners," she said.

You Ay commented that the ban, which was approved last week, would be lifted after the government developed a legal framework to address mixed marriages. "This suspension is to prevent human trafficking through marriage," she said, adding that while the brides often receive as little as USD 1,000, agencies can make tens of thousands of dollars on each marriage.

There is nothing like a good old knee jerk reaction to a problem, mostly expressed by people that are from outside the country. I have several friends that are married to Khmers and all of the Khmer women are living a much better lifestyle than they would if they were still here in Cambodia.In any thing that includes more than one person there is a potential for problems and abuses. So let’s make all interactions between humans illegal just to be safe! How many happy Khmers outside of the country were asked to participate in the article?By the way Cambodians are called Khmers, calling them Cambodians is a sleight to them.

I wrote the above in comments in regards to the article they had posted on their website. It just gets me when instead of looking at a problem for even a short period of time they just ban it or legislate against it .

I am wondering how many legitimate marriages might be canceled because of this move and how devastating it will be to the people that are affected.

The US now has as part of the Patriot act provisions that make it very hard if you meet someone on a dating site and had criminal problems in the past, as I understand the reason was to combat women being abused by their husbands from a particular country but the group that was mostly responsible was not singled out, they just make the rule apply to everybody.

How you can justify putting dating sites into the Patriot act with a straight face is beyond me? Do you think that they attached it to something that they knew had a extremely strong chance of getting passed because the provisions would have a real hard time being passed on their own?