There was this perpetual drunken joke of myself and my Western acquaintances about using US citizenship to leverage dating the local girls in Asia. "Who cares about language or cultural barriers?" We would say, as long as we can hang our US passport around our necks and flaunt them around the nearest Western-styled bars we can find. If we do it correctly, we do not even have to say anything at all before we can hook some young pretty wives to bring back home to the good ole USA...
But the drunken joke really in essence reflects a sad truth that unfortunate still is very much relevant in most parts of a fast-developing Asia. Besides the perpetually isolationist Japan where young people no longer have any desire to be anywhere outside their native country, for most of Asians, settling down in the West, and especially the States, is a dream that they would like to be fulfilled in one way or the other. Even in wealthy places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, emigration to the West is still very significant and raising.
Of course, not everyone is smart or diligent enough to go through the route of getting admitted to higher education in the West and then finding permanent jobs there. In fact, even if the youths do succeed in getting into good Western schools, it often seems that the increasingly strict quotas for handing out immigration visas to foreigners have been discouraging more and more people from wishing to live in the West permanently. Most people today are simply studying in the West to be associated with "having knowledge of the West," giving them some sort of advantage in job markets in their native countries.
However, for most Asians (aside from the cream of the crop that can find good jobs in their native countries no matter what), the lack of work visas just means they will have to find new ways to become legal permanent residents of the West. And after hearing some stories of the measures taken by these determined Asians, I cannot help but feel very much disheartened by just how far such people would go to abandon their own countries.
One of the most notable stories I heard involve the concept of "civil partnership" in Australia. In the Land down Under, supposedly marriage certificate is not required to allow the foreign spouse to take on the Australian citizenship of the significant other. All that need to be proven are that the two people are indeed living together and will definitely form a marital relationship sometime in the "near future." Of course, to do so without official government certificate involve quite a hassle.
The documents involved in proving the "civil partnership" status go from dubious to downright ridiculous. There are pictures that "display intimacy" of the two people, bank account jointly opened by the two (something I would never do even if I am married), objects that show "emotional connection" between the two (a ring, perhaps?)...the fulfillment of such requirements is made just so much more ludicrous when I heard the two people involved in this particular case are still both full-time college students with no stable independent incomes.
It could be fairly assumed that, like almost all other cases of Asians attempting to get citizenship off "romantic" relationships, this one involved an Asian girl enticing the emotional and short-sighted Western guy into such an arrangement. The only thing more despicable than how these Asian girls profess false love to obtain immigration status is how Asians in general become practical, emotionless liars in the Western perspective as more of such situations surface and more Westerners are emotionally (and sometimes financially) from their personal experiences.
Perhaps it is quite hypocritical for me, a Chinese guy obtaining US citizenship off his own family to say, but maybe, just maybe, we Asians, as constituents of a continent with rising political and economic might, should start behaving like we are more proud of our own backgrounds. Continuing to giving up our moral integrity and sense of honesty for ability to live in the West permanently can only draw the ire, not the respect, of Westerners toward a rising Asia.
But the drunken joke really in essence reflects a sad truth that unfortunate still is very much relevant in most parts of a fast-developing Asia. Besides the perpetually isolationist Japan where young people no longer have any desire to be anywhere outside their native country, for most of Asians, settling down in the West, and especially the States, is a dream that they would like to be fulfilled in one way or the other. Even in wealthy places like South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, emigration to the West is still very significant and raising.
Of course, not everyone is smart or diligent enough to go through the route of getting admitted to higher education in the West and then finding permanent jobs there. In fact, even if the youths do succeed in getting into good Western schools, it often seems that the increasingly strict quotas for handing out immigration visas to foreigners have been discouraging more and more people from wishing to live in the West permanently. Most people today are simply studying in the West to be associated with "having knowledge of the West," giving them some sort of advantage in job markets in their native countries.
However, for most Asians (aside from the cream of the crop that can find good jobs in their native countries no matter what), the lack of work visas just means they will have to find new ways to become legal permanent residents of the West. And after hearing some stories of the measures taken by these determined Asians, I cannot help but feel very much disheartened by just how far such people would go to abandon their own countries.
One of the most notable stories I heard involve the concept of "civil partnership" in Australia. In the Land down Under, supposedly marriage certificate is not required to allow the foreign spouse to take on the Australian citizenship of the significant other. All that need to be proven are that the two people are indeed living together and will definitely form a marital relationship sometime in the "near future." Of course, to do so without official government certificate involve quite a hassle.
The documents involved in proving the "civil partnership" status go from dubious to downright ridiculous. There are pictures that "display intimacy" of the two people, bank account jointly opened by the two (something I would never do even if I am married), objects that show "emotional connection" between the two (a ring, perhaps?)...the fulfillment of such requirements is made just so much more ludicrous when I heard the two people involved in this particular case are still both full-time college students with no stable independent incomes.
It could be fairly assumed that, like almost all other cases of Asians attempting to get citizenship off "romantic" relationships, this one involved an Asian girl enticing the emotional and short-sighted Western guy into such an arrangement. The only thing more despicable than how these Asian girls profess false love to obtain immigration status is how Asians in general become practical, emotionless liars in the Western perspective as more of such situations surface and more Westerners are emotionally (and sometimes financially) from their personal experiences.
Perhaps it is quite hypocritical for me, a Chinese guy obtaining US citizenship off his own family to say, but maybe, just maybe, we Asians, as constituents of a continent with rising political and economic might, should start behaving like we are more proud of our own backgrounds. Continuing to giving up our moral integrity and sense of honesty for ability to live in the West permanently can only draw the ire, not the respect, of Westerners toward a rising Asia.
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