Sham marriages stopped by UKBA

Officials from the UK Border Agency arrested a Pakistani man at a Manchester registrar’s office just as he was about to undertake what authorities have called a sham marriage.

The operation took place last Thursday, October 15th based on local intelligence and was carried out at 2pm in the Lloyd Street Registry Office in Manchester. The man had reportedly been attempting to wed a Portuguese woman in an attempt to remain in Britain following the expiration of his visa.

The ceremony was meant to take place with the use of an interpreter, as the man nor woman could speak English or indeed each other’s native tongue.  A spokesperson for the UKBA claimed the agency would target any abuses of immigration, including marriages which were not genuine, saying offenders would be arrested and deported.

The case echoes a similar scam from earlier this year when a Jamaican man was arrested just half an hour before his marriage to his British fiancée. On that occasion, officials in Birmingham raided the local Registry Office to arrest the man who again had overstayed his visa. He was formally arrested outside the doors to the office and held in a detention centre until his deportation back to Jamaica this week.

The UKBA has revealed that it removes one illegal immigrant every eight minutes from the UK, with latest estimates placing the number of people living in the UK illegally from 600,000 to 1 million.