MAIL ONLINE: Figures come from a snapshot Home Office survey over three months / It is revealed 50% of ceremonies involved people who had first entered as students
In a major new immigration scam, half of all bogus weddings now involve foreign students.
The revelation shows the full scale of the past abuse of the student visa system.
The non-EU nationals faced removal from Britain after their bogus colleges were shut down in a crackdown by the Government.
But, instead of returning home, they are arranging fake weddings with British nationals or EU citizens to prolong their stay, often paying thousands of pounds in fees to 'fixers'.
Under a Brussels edict, marrying an EU citizen can grant the same rights to stay as marrying a Briton.
Officials say the trend shows that the migrants' true reason for travelling to the UK in the first place was to settle, not to study. Last year, they identified a suspected 2,000 sham marriages. » | James Slack | Thursday, June 06, 2013
