I will never forget the Filipina who told the police her husband had run  over her with an ATV, while their toddler sat on his lap.  Or the woman filing a restraining order because her husband shook her so hard  in her seventh month of pregnancy that she lost consciousness. That husband  later threatened to send her back to the Philippines without her newborn infant.

NBC’s new comedy "Mail Order Family" wants to turn these  potentially abusive marriages  into sitcom fodder. It normalizes the notion of mail order brides and suggests that human trafficking is funny.

As a Filipino interpreter with over a decade’s experience working  for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, 911, courts, law enforcement  and penitentiaries across the country and abroad, I know firsthand that there is nothing funny about mail order brides.  An immigrant bride in the United States  is extraordinarily vulnerable to abuse, because the two-year conditional green card gives her American husband the power to either apply for her permanent residency and eventual citizenship or get a divorce and have her deported.  The stakes are even higher when there are kids involved because husbands often threaten to send the mothers  back to the Philippines while keeping the children. 

A man who purchases  a mail order bride  from a marriage brokerage agency  already views his wife as a commodity to  own, to manipulate and quite often, to abuse. Tell NBC that mail order brides are real people, not punchlines. Please stop NBC from airing this offensive show by signing this petition.