Immigrants exploit loophole to gain British citizenship

[archigabe]

From the London Telegraph...Not sure about the Citizenship part though!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... iages.html

Illegal immigrants are exploiting a legal loophole to gain British citizenship by getting married in Church of England ceremonies.The diocese of Southwark, which covers Greater London south of the Thames, has seen the number of applications for common licences rise from 90 in 2004 to 493 last year.

Such dramatic increases are being repeated across the country, according to Church records.

In the diocese of Ripon and Leeds, there has been a trebling from 24 applications in 2004 to 69 last year, and in London diocese they have gone from 159 to 383 over the same period.

This contrasts with Government figures that show the number of suspected sham marriages has fallen from 3,500 in 2004 to as few as 400 last year following the introduction of strict controls on those being wed in a register office.

These regulations, which require people not legally settled in the UK to seek special permission to marry, were ruled as unlawful by the Law Lords ruled last month, but a Home Office spokesman said that they would continue to operate the current scheme to investigate individual applications

[Christophe]

It all seems a bit of a mess of an article. Presumably the main point is that people who get married in an Anglican church don't need a certificate of approval, which is otherwise required of people who are not settled in the UK. I note that the last paragraph uses the term "not legally settled", which seems disingenuous to me: an uninformed reader could assume that this somehow means people who are in the UK illegally, whereas of course it means people who have some immigration time limit on their stay in the UK — something quite different.

There is no loophole to British citizenship though. The only difference might be that the requirements for naturalisation are somewhat easier for a person who is married to a British citizen... but that's hardly a "loophole to citizenship".

There are other errors in the article too in the parts not posted here. For example, the article says that:

Foreign nationals have turned to the Church because it is exempt from rules that require all foreign nationals from outside the European Union to obtain a Home Office certificate of approval to marry in a register office.

But that is a gross simplification, since people with the right of abode in the UK, people with indefinite leave to remain in the UK, and family members of EU/EEA citizens in the UK also do not need a Certificate of Approval: a very substantial number of people indeed. And it is not only people who want to get married in a register office that are affected.

All in all, a disappointing article, particularly from the Daily Telegraph, which is usually one of the more accurate newspapers and not one (despite the way it is sometimes portrayed) that is prone to scare-mongering or semi-hysterical reporting about immigration matters.