Sham marriage in the United Kingdom

Sham marriage in the United Kingdom is a form of immigration fraud in the UK, undertaken to gain legal immigrant status. The fraud is investigated mostly by the UK Border Force and previously by the UK Border Agency.

Marriage law in the UK

The laws applying to British citizenship are the same across all four constituent countries, and are under European Union law; however, the laws of marriage are not the same across all four constituent countries.

The UK Home Office 2015 definition of sham marriage:[1]

"A sham marriage or civil partnership is one where the relationship is not genuine but one party hopes to gain an immigration advantage from it. There is no subsisting relationship, dependency, or intent to live as husband and wife or civil partners."

History

In 2010 a legal ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which administers the European Convention on Human Rights, assisted the incidence of sham marriage in the UK. Increases in sham marriage were reported in London boroughs such as Wandsworth.[2] Before 2010, people would need a marriage visa from their own country of origin.

In 2013 Home Office estimated that between 4,000 and 10,000 marriages per year were sham marriages entered for the purpose of gaining legal immigration status for the non-EU partner.[3]

See also

References
  1. "Criminal investigation: sham marriage" (PDF). UK Government - Home Office. 19 August 2015. Retrieved 14 April 2019.
  2. "Rise in sham marriages to beat UK immigration laws". BBC News. 7 January 2010.
  3. Wright, Robert (9 September 2018). "Crackdown on sham marriages leaves migrants in limbo". Financial Times. Retrieved 20 June 2019.
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