UK immigration chief John Vine cautions of fraud!
“Proxy marriage” means that marriage can take place without one of the parties being present, but John Vine cautions that there are certain foreign nationals taking advantage of this scheme fraudulently to gain UK residence visas by using certificates and there are evidences to prove that. Some of these are scams reports said. This proves to be a challenge for UK and this would be hard to gather evidences.
John said that the UK Home Office is not doing everything in its power to check. He said, these wedding certificates from certain countries such as Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria should be accurately checked as there are reports that fraudulent visa applications may be made with the use of documents from these countries.
UK is a member of the EU, thus EU nationals will usually have the right to live and work in the UK as well as their non EU spouses. Through this policy, immigrants will have the right to live and work in the UK through these.
The UK is obliged to handle “proxy marriage” just like an ordinary one if it’s legitimate but no one really knows its legitimacy if not accurately examined. In some countries, it is legal; therefore an EU citizen can legally marry citizens from these said countries without really going there. Countries like Brazil, Paraguay, Ghana and Nigeria, matrimony by proxy are allowed.
As such, a fake union may very well be approved by immigration. Given to the fact that, if an applicant provides the proper documentation, it would be hard and tedious for authorities to gather evidences to prove that these are fraudulent, therefore, they would just approve these applications.
The immigration chief and his staff have found out that 80% of these are bogus or fraudulent out of the sample of 29 certificates from their study. The studies show an alarming figure and should be given extra attention. A rising number of immigrants are acquiring their citizenship through this method to dodge UK’s visa laws.
There are around 2.5 million EU citizens living in the UK and more than one third of these acquired their citizenship through this route. In a report, in 2013, 20% who applied for UK residency involves proxy marriages. It could very well mean that some of these applications are fraudulent
He said that there should be more effort on the immigrations part to prevent this kind of fraud and residency applications. There should be more prosecutions in these cases where bogus proxy marriage is involved, the chief said. In 2013, the Home Office in the UK has foiled 1,300 fake weddings and more than two times than in 2012, a spokesman of the Home Office revealed. It is a good achievement for Britain’s Border Protection and Immigration but it needs more effort to stop these scams.