Help - Dad planning arranged marriage

[dadsmarriage]

I have just found out that my “D”F is planning to arrange a marriage for himself with a very much younger woman from abroad. I have seen some email evidence of this, between DF and a middle man. The emails are discussing how the Home Office will be suspicious because of the massive age gap, and how to make the visa application watertight so she can’t be refused.

I am just disgusted by him. My DP knows and doesn’t want anything to do with him again, so I’m going to have to confront this somehow. We have a family dinner arranged for NYE. I don’t think I can even look at him. How do I confront him about it? Is this even legal? I want to stop it, but I don’t know how to, or if it would get him into serious trouble if it’s illegal. I’m a bit in shock and rambling, but would appreciate any advice, or to know if anyone’s faced a similar revelation.

NC for this, but penguin bollards, elderly Korean Lady etc.

Thank you Ruderidinghood for the support line link, though I hope it will be irrelevant. If there’s a hint that the person is underaged or forced I will contact them.

Report to Home Office.

Full names, emails to and from middle man if you can supply them.

And thanks for caring about your Dad.

Have you asked him what age she is? Have you talked to him in a non-judgmental way about this so that you can find what is actually going on?

You could at least try to talk to him first and try to understand his motives before reporting him.

Is your dad desperate for money? I can't quite understand his motive otherwise.

The home office will be interested - my exBIL was attempting to marry an EU national (he's not British/EU) back in 2011 and they found out and stopped it before it could go ahead. She got prosecuted and he got deported.

I think you should see it as HIS BEING USED
your father could lose everything.
Maybe your emotions shouldn't be of disgust

OP before reporting to the HO I suggest finding out what the legal implications are first and go from there. It may be a criminal offence and he may be arrested; so make sure you will be ok with that and the fallout from family. I don't know I'm not a lawyer but I would check. Good luck and let us know. X

In my experience the UK spouse isn’t committing a crime unless they’re being paid, they wouldn’t be prosecuted, could just say he was lonely and was taken advantage of. My dh comes from a country that has a lot of visa problems / scams / fake marriages etc. trying to get a British visa. The British embassy there no longer processes visas as it was so corrupt, they’ve outsourced to another British embassy in another country. If there is any suggestion of a scam marriage the visa will be refused or delayed indefinitely, for years and years!

Legal implications:

1. If he is an EEA national - her application will be refused, he could in theory be asked to leave the UK on the basis of abuse of rights but if he has been here for 5 years or more then this is extremely unlikely (and to be honest unlikely anyway - removal of an EEA national without a criminal conviction is rare).

Prospect of him being prosecuted is minimal, it would be dealt with administratively unless they think he's some sort of kingpin / management level of a sham marriage enterprise.

1. if he is British - her application will be refused, she may also be banned from entering the UK under 320(11) of the Rules for having previously contrived to frustrate the Rules by entering a sham marriage. He cannot be deported. Very unlikely he would be prosecuted again unless he is considered to be implicated at a higher level.

In practice it isn't likely that the father would be prosecuted since it sounds like he is mostly aiming to achieve sex with a younger woman in exchange for sponsoring her visa. It's hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he didn't genuinely intend to marry her even if they were introduced and even if they then sought to embellish the level of their contact to persuade the HO to let them live together.

Having said that, in theory he could be prosecuted under s.25 Immigration Act 1971 - assisting unlawful immigration
This is Deep Shit levels of difficulty, because it's a POCA offence so he would then have to go through establishing that he doesn't have a "criminal lifestyle"
Likely sentence for an own marriage offence where the defendant isn't at the organised crime level is 1 - 3 years.

How are you today OP?

Is he protecting his assets? If not, she'll be entitled to half of everything he owns when she divorces him, which sounds like there's a high chance of that happening! Talk to him about prenups.

I'd also ask what's in it for him and remind him it's illegal to do this. You could even threaten to tell the Home Office but I'm not sure what repercussions could occur for your dad if you do go down that route.