Entry into Britain just got tough - no more sham marriages

Entry into the UK has got a bit more problematic because of growing incidences of sham marriages. The United Kingdom has, therefore, amended its laws to crack down on such alliances and marriage registrars will, henceforth, have to refer to the home office all proposed marriages. These would include non-European Economic Area (non-EEA) nationals such as Indian citizens, who have limited or no immigration status in the UK.
There would be an extended period of time given to the authorities to investigate the genuineness of a proposed marriage.
Such tightened norms would translate into bad news for unscrupulous Indian citizens who had been banking upon this shortcut method to remain on in the UK. Many rackets of sham marriages involving Indians have been busted in the past. As per statistics, Indians were one of the most referred nationals for suspected sham marriages and they made up nearly 10% of the total referrals made to the home office in 2012.
One mode of operation has been made public – a home office report released last year has indicated that there existed a well-designed scam where Portuguese women came to the UK to marry Indian men at the Blackburn register office. The brides would make initial trips to the UK to give notice of marriage at a register office, which was often different from the register office where they intended to hold the ceremony.
Moreover, they attended appointments at banks in the UK and elsewhere, in order to generate documentation to support the illusion that they were based in the UK and such documents were later made use of to support an immigration application to the home office by their Indian spouse.
Each Indian nationals usually shelled out approximately £6,000 (nearly Rs 6 lakh) to a facilitator in the UK, who in turn worked with another agency in Portugal to recruit the brides. It seems this practice has been employed by many Indian students.