2013-10-16: Daily Mail: 1/5 avioliitoista kaupungeissa feikkejä

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15,000 civil marriages every years are bogus: 1 in 5 weddings held in cities is faked to get around migration laws

    Top UK registrar Mark Rimmer says 20% of marriages are 'suspicious'
    Home Office sent 1,900 warnings about potentially bogus unions last year
    But Mr Rimmer says that is the 'tip of a very large iceberg'

One in five civil marriages in parts of Britain may be bogus, it emerged yesterday.

Some 15,000 such ceremonies a year are taking place simply to get around immigration law, estimates one of the country's most senior registrars, Mark Rimmer.

Last year the Home Office received nearly 1,900 warnings about potentially bogus unions.

But Mr Rimmer, the chairman of the Local Registration Services Association, said that figure represented 'the tip of a very large iceberg'. He said that in urban areas, up to 20 per cent of marriages are 'suspicious'.

He estimated that overall, 15,000 of the 173,000 civil weddings each year in England and Wales could be fake unions designed to evade immigration laws.

Registrars were powerless to prevent couples they suspected of faking their relationships from marrying and were forced to conduct the ceremonies 'through gritted teeth', he said.
Mark Rimmer, chairman of the Local Registration Services Association, said official figures are the 'tip of a very large iceberg'

Mark Rimmer, chairman of the Local Registration Services Association, said official figures are the 'tip of a very large iceberg'

Mr Rimmer said the problem was worse than at its high point in 2004 because laws drawn up since then to deal with the problem had been watered down by a series of human rights judgments to the point where they were 'meaningless'.

Last week ministers announced a major crackdown on sham weddings, with laws

designed to ensure every potential sham wedding is reported and investigated before it happens. It also gives officials more power to delay the ceremony taking place by up to 70 days.

Official figures show that the number of reported cases has tripled in the last three years. In 2009 some 561 reports were lodged with officials, a figure which nearly doubled in a year to 934 in 2010. By 2011 it stood at 1,741 and last year 1,891.

Home Office officials admit that the figure is likely to severely underestimate the scale of the problem. They put the likely number of sham weddings at between four and ten thousand a year. But Mr Rimmer says the problem is even worse than that.

He claims only the most blatant cases are flagged up and 'borderline' weddings which are slightly suspicious go unreported.

(http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/10/16/article-2462051-18C64A7700000578-395_634x357.jpg)
Immigration officers question the Nigerian man, 32, after interrupting his sham marriage ceremony


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2462051/15-000-civil-marriages-years-bogus-1-5-weddings-migration-laws.html#ixzz2hstVtqWX


Omat kommentit:
-Jotkut Nigerialaiset miehet kerran vuodessa hakee uuden vaimon kotimaastaan ja sitten kaikki saa kansalaisuuden. Ja UK jatkaa rikastumistaan. Ja vihernaiset kerran vuodessa nai syrjittyjä "laittomia" pakistanilaisia miehiä että varmasti kaikki halukkaat saa kansalaisuuden. Maailmasta parempi paikka jne..

A Pakistani student and a Portuguese woman were sent to prison for 12 months after they were found guilty of plotting a sham wedding so he could remain in the UK.

Salome Almeida, 22, admitted to police that she had agreed to marry Wahab Khalid, 23, for £1,340.

Almeida arrived in the UK a few weeks before the wedding was  due to take place and visited a register office with Khalid to give notice to marry.

Despite only being in the UK for 24 hours, she opened a bank account and received a national insurance number.

The pair were arrested in April this year at a register office in Harrow, north London, and confessed to conspiracy to facilitate a breach of immigration rules.