MANILA, Philippines -- Despite a law banning mail-order marriages about 300,000 to half a million Filipino mail-order brides continue to leave the country each year and Senate President Manuel Villar wants this investigated.

In Senate Resolution 101, Villar urged the Senate committee youth, women, and family relations to ?inquire into the plight of these women and [into] the brazen violation of corresponding laws?with the end view of charting remedial measures to protect the dignity of Filipinas.?

He worried that criminal syndicates are behind mail-order bride operations.

The figures on the number of mail-order brides, said Villar?s staff, came from the women?s organization Gabriela.

Villar, whose election campaign last May banked partly on a pro-woman stance, also noted the proliferation of websites promoting mail-order matches, citing three sites as an example.

It said the first website advertises itself as a ?world-class service for a 10th of a century [that] has been in business to introduce girls from the Philippines who would like to correspond, meet, and marry Western men through which Filipino women can be instantly ordered,? subject to a $5 processing fee.

The second website advertises ?mail-order brides, pen pal girls exclusively from the Philippines, lovely Filipina ladies wishing to correspond and meet foreign gentlemen for romance and possible marriage.?

The third site boasts: ?Philippine women from Luzon have masters degrees.?

Villar said Republic Act 6955 of 1990 ?declare(s) as unlawful the practice of matching Filipino women for marriage to foreign nationals on a mail order basis and other similar practices, including the advertisement, publication, printing or distribution of brochures, fliers, and other propaganda materials in furtherance thereof and providing penalty therefore.?

?The government must implement the law prohibiting the violation of Filipino women, and should look after distressed Filipinas who have suffered abuses in the hands of foreign spouses,? he stressed.

Various non-government organizations working with women and migrant Filipinos note that many Filipino mail-order brides become prostitutes, are raped or abused.