To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases of immigration marriage fraud have led to (a) an investigation and (b) a subsequent deportation in each of the last eight years.
Answered on
25 July 2016
The information requested is shown in the following table:
Year | Cases referred | Total Investigations |
2014/15 | 137 | 54 |
2015/16 | 55 | 47 |
Prior to 2014 the records were not held centrally. The decrease in the number of referrals to the Home Office can be aligned to the introduction of the Immigration Act 2014. This legislation extends the notification period for those seeking to marry up to 70 days and provides time for the Home Office to investigate whether the marriage is sham. The effect of this is that those marriages deemed to be sham can be prevented from taking place. It would be a disproportionate cost to disaggregate information on the number of criminal investigations for this offence from all of those prosecuted who were subsequently deported.