I don't understand how this is 'ruining' lives. I mean, it seems her husband's family overstayed their visa deliberately and without due process.

How is this not a warranted situation for deportation, and why should he not be deported?

I'm not going to get into immigration debate here, look it up.

I, too, am too chicken to get myself murdered.

"if I do something which brings dishonour to my family they'll kill me and my mother will get in trouble as well. I know it's hard for you to understand but this is how my culture is."

If nobody ever takes a stand then this is how it will continue as well.

I agree completely. I think a lot of people will look at the things that I say and call me an asshole for saying them, but I really think that's true. If people don't take a stand against this sort of shit, it will continue. The game keeps going because people keep playing it.

She's not chicken. Saying that is disrespectful to the culture she is coming from. She is trying to find the most diplomatic way to extricate herself from an arranged marriage without destroying her connections to her family.

Please note that when she says about different culture she doesn’t mean even she respects it, in any other way that you might „respect” a bully. It’s not about destroying her connection with family, it’s about avoiding violence against her, her mother and her sister.

Yes that was my meaning, thanks for clarifying. I'm well against arranged marriages but support whatever she needs to do to get through this diplomatically.

>Saying that is disrespectful to the culture she is coming from.

I'm getting the feeling that the culture she comes from is causing her to fear for her life because of disobedience. She may deserve respect herself, but her culture certainly doesn't.

Could not agree more. Cultural sensitivity is one thing, acceptance of this is different entirely.

Families who hold cultural values that are antipodal to our own, which tend to abhor slavery in all of its forms. If their lives are ruined, it is because they are flagrantly disobeying laws on immigration and human trafficking.

By the same argument, imprisoning the criminal mastermind of an organized crime family is also ruining the lives of more than one family. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. In the US, and in Europe, forced marriages, involuntary servitude, and other curtailments of free will and self determination are considered immoral, and in most places are also illegal. If the families wished to continue living by exclusively Pakistani cultural values, perhaps they shouldn't be trying to control women like chattel property in Spain and the US.

WTF sergiotapia?

They can avoid having their lives ruined merely by not acting like misogynist thugs amidst teeming hordes of people that believe in gender equality.

From the comments, she is a woman from Pakistan. Thought it appears she is currently studying in Spain, she would probably wind up back in Pakistan. Now I'm guessing she is from a more affluent family, but Pakistan isn't entirely known for women's rights...

She tried to get him deported.

She is studying in Spain.

She is from Pakistan where cultural norms are different.