Thousands of couples hoping to tie the knot are being wrongly subjected to “humiliating” months-long investigations by the Home Office on suspicion of entering into “sham marriages”.
The checks often involve couples being hauled into immigration centres and grilled separately about the details of their relationship.
Registry offices flagged 107,432 cases to the government between 2016 and 2022. But records obtained by openDemocracy show only 1.2% (1,319) were actually found to be sham marriages.
