It has emerged that Dutch women have been going through sham marriages in Great Britain to get illegal immigrants residence rights. On Thursday, the British immigration authorities stopped a Nigerian man and Dutch woman from getting married.

The officers were only just in time and the would-be newly weds were handcuffed in front of the altar and taken away. The two witnesses and the person suspected of arranging the marriage were also arrested.

Two other Dutch women were arrested in July and August after being involved in similar scams. In earlier cases, the fake brides came from the poorer European Union member states in Central Europe.

The British authorities are investigating whether a network of Nigerian fixers have started paying Dutch women to help illegal immigrants (mainly from Africa) get hold of residence permits. With a residence permit, a migrant can access education, welfare benefits and free health care in Britain.

Tough
Britain’s Border Agency has got tough since a new government came to power in May. The old Labour administration is being blamed for having let illegal immigration get out of control over the last 13 years. Fake marriages play an important role in the problem. In 2004, official Labour figures put these sham weddings at 1700 per year, but the real number is reckoned to be nearer 15,000.

In response, the new government ordered an “intense period of enforcement” through the summer months. This has led to operations including those involving the Dutch women. One has been sentenced to a 12-month prison term, while the other was given a suspended sentence and banned from re-entering the country.

Multiple marriage
The scale of the wedding scams in Britain came to light during the recent trial of an Anglican vicar. In a period of four years, he had married 360 illegal immigrants to bogus partners.

The Rev Alex Brown carried out as many as eight weddings a day at his church in Hastings. Some of the brides and grooms had even appeared before him as spouses in other weddings earlier in the day.

Other things should also have alerted the cleric to the fact that something was very wrong: 90 of the wedding partners were registered as living at the same address, one bride appeared with her dress in a plastic bag (she put it on in the sacristy, and changed back out of it there after the ceremony), and one groom who turned up with a ring that was far too small for his spouse’s finger.

Payment
The vicar was introduced to the couples by two lawyers, one from Nigeria and the other from Ukraine. They paid European Union citizens from the Baltic states and Poland 3,000 pounds to marry the illegal immigrants. Anglican Church weddings were chosen because the regulations governing marriage licences are less stringently enforced by the clerical authorities than by local government officials.

The church authorities in Hastings only became suspicious after the number of marriage ceremonies being held in the church increased 30-fold within a space of four years. Rev Brown told the judge he had acted in good faith and argued that marrying people was part of his vocation.