Arranged marriages hinder integration of Asian minorities in the UK
by Jane Kelly, The Conservative Woman:
This week, The Times recently featured a tragic story: Meena, aged eighteen from Bangladesh, whose name it changed, had an arranged marriage to a Bangladeshi man from east London. She arrived in the UK on a two and a half year spousal visa. After five years she would have been able to apply for indefinite leave to remain, but he sent her back to Bangladesh.
She said: ‘One day he told me to get on a plane. I said I would not leave without my son, so he beat me. ‘If you don’t go,’ he said, ‘I’ll kill you.’
For years the British visa and passport has been the object of desperation, scams, and outrageous fraud. Our prisons are full of people who arrived here with false documents or got in and spent their time arranging fake documents for others.
People from all over the world regularly marry to get a British visa. These are sham marriages where both parties know it is a fraud. It is a criminal offence to take part in one but they are easily achieved and rarely investigated. Dozens of fixers are thought to be involved in this international online bridal trade. One ad, entitled ‘Marriage in England,’ reads: ‘Offers of weddings in England. The man provides cover for all costs, including tickets. Plus, you get food and accommodation and a wedding gift of £6,000.’
Another says: ‘I am looking for voluntary, responsible girls who want to earn £4,000 in exchange for marrying a foreigner in England.’ They are shockingly blunt. One simply said: ‘Polish women available for marriage.’
After a bogus marriage scam was revealed last year, former Crown Prosecution chief Nazir Afzal said officials were worried about being accused of ‘racism ‘or ‘religious discrimination’ so might not challenge fake couples.
‘People these days are less likely to ask those kinds of questions,’ he said, ‘because they don’t want to be accused of being racist or religiously discriminatory. The saddest thing is that we the British taxpayer, the public lose out, and that can’t be right.’
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