Ah, in the good old days,
they were called mariages blancs,
arranged between gay men (such as the poet Auden)
to Jewish or other unacceptable women,
or between my Canadian friend Dennis
to Sally Potter, the film-maker, both queer.
I, as an Irish/EU citizen, was pressured
into marrying a deeply unpleasant,
ambitious, grasping, homophobic, Catholic Pole -
only a few years before Poland joined the EU.
She paid only for my bargain Belfast-London airline fare.
I would have much preferred
an Angolan woman or Iraqi Kurd.
BBC's File on 4 Investigates how Immigration Enforcement officers are tackling sham marriages. Claire Jones follows Home Office officials as they apprehend people entering into, and organising fake marriages in order to circumvent the UK’s immigration laws. She discovers details of criminal gangs charging people up to £30,000 for a partner and 'marriage pack', a set of photos and documents designed to create a convincing back story of the fake relationship. After File on 4 Investigates asked the Home Office why more statistics are not available on suspected fake marriages, they have now committed to regularly publishing these numbers 'in due course'.
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