I've heard about Asian women oppressed by their American husbands, but see what Tran Dinh Thanh Lam says about Taiwan's Vietnamese brides, citing Bruno Ciceri, a Catholic priest in charge of the Stella Maris International Service Center for migrants in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.

"Many times women are used as a tool for reproduction and they must give birth to a boy, otherwise they are considered useless," he told a recent seminar on migration in Thailand....The lack of love, cultural differences and the language barrier make these marriages doomed to fail from the beginning," he said. He added that some foreign wives are barred from making friends and phone calls and do not know of local laws they can use to assert their rights. Those who cannot speak Mandarin find it almost impossible to get help if they are abused.