THE GOVERNMENT has issued new guidelines to marriage registrars to try to halt an increase in suspected “sham marriages” between eastern European women and non-EU nationals.
The move follows intense lobbying by several EU countries, who have raised concerns about the abuse of their citizens in Ireland following “sham marriages” conducted to circumvent Irish immigration laws.
The guidelines introduce new identification requirements for all people getting married, restrictions on the use of interpreters and the number of people who can be admitted to a registrar’s office.
The countries have also warned the marriages are a “security threat” as they could be used by terrorists to gain residency rights in Ireland, which would enable them to travel freely in the EU.
The marriage scams are typically organised by men from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and some African states, who are seeking residency in Ireland. They recruit women from EU states in eastern Europe for marriages, usually offering them up to €3,000.
Latvia, which has tracked hundreds of young women coming to Ireland to engage in marriages with non-EU nationals since 2006, formally asked the Government last year to introduce tough measures to combat the scam.
A briefing paper prepared by the Latvian ministry for foreign affairs this year concludes: “In spite of all efforts of the Latvian and other EU states’ embassies in Dublin, the feedback from competent Irish authorities is minimal.”
Officials at the Latvian ministry of foreign affairs, interior ministry and the police told The Irish Timeslast month they were very frustrated by the slow response of the Government to the problem.
“We started a police investigation in 2006 and contacted the Garda but they kept silent. We called the Irish Embassy in Riga.
“There was an answer that in Ireland a ‘sham marriage’ is not a specific crime,” said Arturs Vaisla, head of the Latvian police’s human trafficking unit.
“By the summer of 2009, the organisers understood that the Irish police could do nothing. They [the police] kept silent like rabbits.
“This was when the organisers started to use force, fraud, rape and mass rape,” said Mr Vaisla, who believes the authorities would have responded faster if Irish women were being abused.
The new guidelines for registrars introduce:
- a requirement for all foreign birth certificates to bear an official stamp or a letter from the country's embassy attesting to its authenticity.
- interpreters must be from an independent verifiable translation company.
- restrictions on the number of people allowed into a registrar's office when a couple are giving notice to a marriage.
- if a person's marital status cannot be determined, the registrar may ask for an official letter from the embassy proving they are free to marry.
- new ID requirements.