UK IMMIGRATION NEWS

Newly Married Couples Can Live in the UK According to Court Ruling

Monday, 11 August 2008

The House of Lords have ruled that forcing a migrant to prove a relationship is genuine is 'arbitrary and unjust', even if they were getting married only weeks before their permission to stay in Britain ran out.

Foreigners will now once again be free to prolong their stay in the UK by getting married at the last minute to a person who already has permission to live here.

The ban was brought in by then-Home Secretary David Blunkett in 2004, amid concerns that thousands of people a year were using sham marriages to stay into the UK. They introduced the Certificate of Approval which was targeted at those who marry Britons, or EU citizens with full residency rights, in order to gain permission to live here indefinitely. Migrants were forced to apply for the certificate to marry if they lived outside the EU, or had only limited rights to live in the UK.

Those with only three months leave to stay remaining were routinely refused on the grounds that the ceremony was intended only to avoid removal from the country.

However the regulations were ruled as illegal by the High Court in 2006, and the same ruling was passed at the Appeals Court last year. The House of Lords' ruling dismissed this law, on the grounds that it is a breach of Section 12 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to marry.

Three couples who had initially been refused the right to marry brought the cases to the courts. Mahmoud Baiai, 37, an Algerian illegal immigrant, was refused permission to marry Izabella Trzcincka, 28, a Polish national who was legally entitled to live in the UK.

The two other cases related to asylum seekers, including one who had been told to leave the country but wanted to marry someone already given protection as a refugee.

All three couples were later allowed to stay, before their cases reached the House of Lords.

However, Damian Green, the shadow Immigration minister, said: "This is yet another defeat for the Government in the courts under their own human rights legislation - which could make it easier for bogus marriages to take place. It is vital that we are protected against sham marriages set up to evade immigration laws - but the current arrangements are clearly not working."

The Home Office will now be forced to consider the merits of a union being made even at the very last moment before a migrant is due to leave the UK.

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