BIG Coffee Morning - March 2007

by Gun Wechsler

Some 40 members and friends of BIG met for a lively coffee morning in the lovely and spacious living room of Charlene Avocato in San Roman.

During the course of the morning a cheque for one million Bolivares was presented to Ms. Lucy Alio. She is the head of ARFA, which is a wild animal rescue center.

Mr. Ben Ziff, Public Affairs Officer of the American Embassy gave a spirited and humorous talk on “Borderline Relations”.

At first impression one might have been led to believe that the theme was to deal with some “Borderline” psychological condition or possibly political relations, but Ben put us straight on that immediately – he would analyze bi-national relationships/marriages.

--- Great subject for our British INTERNATIONAL Group, whose membership covers some 30 countries.

We learned that while most people still marry their “landsmen,” bi-national marriages are a growing phenomena worldwide and has even become a subject of academic study.

Ben assured us that his study was based on solid statistical facts, “for the most part anyway,” he added that “mileage and experience might vary,” as the disqualifier goes in the USA.

So what can one expect these days, when so many of us either vacation abroad or move around the world in search of employment?! The whole world is becoming international, multi-national, multi-lingual, multi-racial not to mention multi-complex!

In the USA, for example, the foreign-born population grew by 57% in one decade (1990-2000). One fifth of all children under 18 are either foreign-born or grow up in families where at least one parent is foreign-born.In Spain 8.5% of couples are married to foreigners.

In Italy 10% choose non-Italian spouses with Germans on top of the wish list for preferred choice, and French for a close runner-up (for women), while Italian men favor Romanian of Polish spouses.

The Swiss marry foreigners 50% of the time.

There again the Germans rate the highest.The marriage pattern among refugees indicate that they mostly choose to marry other refugees of the same nationality, whereas labor immigrants are more likely to marry outside of their own nationality.

Hm, one wonders if proper work visas of Green Cards might have anything to do with that choice?

So why this increase in bi-national marriages?

Social scientists list 4 primary reasons:

Proximity: Significant migratory flows increase the pool of possible foreign mates. If all of a sudden your neighborhood, lets say in a small town in Austria, has an influx of Maroccan “Gast Arbeiters”, the chances are that some bi-national relationship might spring up from this proximity.

Media: Images of relationships/marriages providing glimpses and dreams of alternative life styles.

Emancipation of Women: As the status of women improves in much of the world, they have more of a voice in choosing a marriage partner.

Economics: Marriage brokers, mail-order brides and the Internet allow and incredible ease of international outreach in search of non-native marital partners.

Ben’s own top 10 reasons for a “Borderline” or “Bi-National Marriage” went from “keeping annoying relatives in far-away locales” to “giving your kids cool names with affective meanings” like “Yes, Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong is an ancient name meaning Beautiful Child with Rhythm,” which we can elaborate on with a friend over a café latte.

But Ben’s number one reason for choosing a foreign spouse is simply that it is all a matter of the heart regardless of what statistical facts or social scientists indicate.