MANILA, Philippines -- In the Broadway play ?Fiddler on The Roof,? three impoverished sisters, in a turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russian village, plead with Yenta: ?Matchmaker ? find me a catch/ And make me a perfect match.?

Yenta would feel at home in Philippines 2007. An ?international marriage market? is bustling here, says a Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) study. Wedding rings are visas out of grinding penury. Some 309,745 Filipinos married foreigners, within an 18-year span. Nine out of 10 (92 percent) were brides.

This market could ?further expand [this] decade,? said Minda Valencia and Myra Ramos of CFO, with demographer Nimfa Ogena, in their paper on marriage migration. The Overseas Foreign Workers Journalism Consortium circulated a study summary.

Some spouses-to-be admit that marrying foreigners ?is the easiest ticket for possible overseas work and settlement overseas,? the Consortium?s Jeremaiah Opiniano wrote. Marriage of convenience also provides income for families locked into poverty.

Last year, 24,904 marriages to foreigners were registered -- up from 21,100 the previous year. Destinations for the brides, and occasional groom, in 2006 were: United States, 10,190; Japan, 8,601; Canada, 988; United Kingdom, 619. These countries screen out marriages of convenience.

An Asian marriage migration trend is surging, Valencia, Ramos and Ogena point out. The rise in the number of Filipinas flying to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea is ?significant.? CFO data from 1995 to 2004 show more Filipinas marrying nationals of these three East Asian countries.

Brides tend to be younger and less educated than their foreign spouses. ?There is a rising number of Filipino women marrying Asian nationals nearly thrice their age,? Opiniano wrote. As Yenta sang: ?Hodel -- I made a match for you./ He?s handsome. He?s young./ All right, he?s 62./ But he?s a good catch. True? True.?

That?s lighthearted Broadway. But it shows two different worlds collide when young Filipinas, often from remote villages, pair up with elderly foreigners, says Philippine Studies. In 1999, the Ateneo de Manila University quarterly analyzed psychological fallout from 20,164 Filipino-Japanese marriages over five years.

?The Filipino wife was not prepared for the setup in the Japanese household, of the obedience expected by her-in laws,? wrote University of the Philippines? Leslie Buazon. There?s a flipside. ?The Japanese were unprepared for the independent spirit of the foreigner wife.?

With Angelica Escalona, Buazon studied marriages in a farming village on northeast Honsho Island. In the 1980s, foreign brides started streaming into Yamagata. Most were Koreans and Chinese, followed by Filipinas from Manila and Bataan, Cavite, Bicol, Leyte.

As in other countries, the young flood into cities. This leaves villages like Yamagata with skewed sex ratios. Many males above 30 can?t find a spouse. Most seek out local Yentas for matchmaking.

In Yamagata, most marriages were brokered through mail. Cyberspace has replaced Yenta, the CFO study shows. Filipinas now meet foreign spouses through mobile phones. Internet-based chatting leads to wedding rings. Often, there?s an overseas relative eager to sub for Yenta.

Almost a third of Yamagata brides have gone to college. CFO Director Valencia reports that today most of those heading for Japan and Korea are high school graduates and college undergraduates. Overall, educational similarities among Filipino, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese spouses are ?declining.?

The Taiwanese spouse often was less educated than the Filipina. They ?married up.? This was true for half of the 4,862 registered Filipina marriages from 1995 to 2004. But in Japan and Korea, the spouses tended to ?marry down.?

Marriages of convenience permit overseas migration, which they believe ?could dramatically change their lives,? Valencia, Ramos and Ogena observed. They reveal ?desperate moves of women who would rather risk settling in a foreign land (which they know little about).? Their alternative is coping with ?a future life in poverty and/or solitude or loneliness.? It also bears a social stigma of being labeled as ?non-marriageable.?

Thus, Yenta sings to sister Chava: ?He?s handsome, He?s tall./ That is from side to side/ You heard he has a temper/ He?ll beat you every night /But only when?s he?s sober/ So, you?re all right.?

Not so. Costs can be high. Tokyo data showed that 3,931 of the 10,242 Filipino women divorced their Japanese spouses. In the Yamagata study, most Filipina wives were Catholics but didn?t have access to church. Ties to the faith of their fathers weakened. To please in-laws and ensure ?harmonious relations,? they joined rituals of their Japanese families.

Aside from language barriers, different climate, food, ?characteristics peculiar to the Japanese family caused the most stress,? Japanese psychiatrist Norohiko Kuwayama noted. Thus, groups like the Good Shepherd sisters run seminars that include tips on ?surviving? migration-linked marriages.

Filipina Rita and Japanese Endo use sign language to communicate. Endo has visited the Philippines. Rita will go to Japan as her wedding ring becomes a visa. ?I can learn to love Endo,? Rita says wistfully.

One hopes so. For this surge in marriages of convenience is at rock bottom an indictment. It condemns rulers whose greed compels Filipinas to play dice, with their deepest human hopes. To reach some measure of a decent life, they must get a visa in their wedding rings. Like Ruth of Scriptures, these Filipinas stand amid the alien grain.

* * *

Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com

More Inquirer columns

Previous columns:
Postmortem evidence ? 12/18/07
Slaughter of the birds ? 12/13/07
A nation of highwaymen ? 12/11/07
Lowered voices ? 12/04/07
Sweat or pontificate? ? 11/29/07