London, April 23
Britain is planning measures to clamp down on those using sham marriages and non-existent language school courses to evade immigration laws and stay on in the country.
Announcing this here, Home Secretary David Blunkett said the measures on marriages and students had been in the pipeline for several months.
He said he would also review industry quotas in areas such as agriculture for new migrants from the eastern European states that would join the EU next month.
Blunkett attacked commentators who claimed that Britain’s migration problems could be resolved with a “big bang” introduction of ID cards.
The drive against sham marriages would allow only designed register offices to authorise marriages involving foreign nationals. A change in the law was also envisaged to allow registrars to refuse to marry couples they suspected.
Blunkett would publish draft legislation on Monday detailing how his proposed national identity card scheme would work.
He said the Home Office would look more closely at the cases of the 300,000 students who come to study each year.
— PTI
