Photo: PA
The Home Office is ramping up hostility towards EU citizens, requiring additional paperwork, costs and scrutiny for proposed marriages involving them.
The latest HO guidance on “marriage investigations” reveals that from 1 July, EU citizens who do not have EU Settled Status or a pending application submitted before that date, will fall into the sham marriage referral and investigation scheme.
This means they will need to have a mandatory “marriage visitor visa” if they are coming to the UK to get married or form a civil partnership while visiting.
The guidance says British and Irish citizens will remain exempt from the scheme.
Cosi Doerfel Hill, EU citizens rights campaigner, said: “Whatever happened to the human right to be free to marry who you want?
“How many people will know that they need permission from the home office to marry?
“The very concept is appalling!”
Another campaigner from the In Limbo group, Marlies Haselton, suggested it’s not the EU citizens who are most likely to enter fake marriages. She said: “‘Sham marriages’ of Brits partnering up with EU citizens in order to escape global Britain.
“I just had to show my passport to be able to marry my British husband. No hostile probing into our private life.
“Love really knows no borders. Cheesy but true! #FreedomOfMovement”
One Twitter user said: “Sheer discrimination against EU Citizens, Patel is obsessed with hostile policy. Now marriage is being treated with hostility.
“The message is stark, EU Citizens are not welcome in the UK. Brexit is hostile.” And Amoura Curry, whose boyfriend was previously detained by the Home Office and almost deported to a country where he has no family or friends, asked: “What the f*** is wrong with you lot?”
Paul Rabaut said: “Lost your freedom of movement, now they’re coming for your freedom to love.
“Love, as it turns out, doesn’t win. Brexit does.”
“At some point I think the Tories will build a Britain Wall,” David Beta said.
Another Twitter user said: “This is funny. More people will try and get an EU passport than a British Passport. How deluded is the UK government?”
Technologist and author Stephen Cobb said: “UK HO is inherently hostile to anyone who is not a Brit married to a Brit.
“The hoops and fees and scrutiny applied to my American wife of 30+ years being a case in point.”
Heidi Saevareid said: “When my husband (American) and I (EEA) gave notice of marriage 3 years ago, we were both interrogated separately for an hour and warned about the consequences of a sham marriage.
“A formality, but it felt incredibly hostile, and clearly it’s going to get worse from now on.”
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