‘Bride-dumping’
All I can say is, I’m glad these women are fighting back. This is absolutely disgusting:
Campaigners here say that up to 15,000 women have been “conned” in similar ways by men from Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States. The men get married to vulnerable and unsuspecting Indian women – but shortly after the formalities have been completed, they return to the countries where they hold citizenship, often never to return.
Needless to say, they take huge dowries with them – often up to $60,000 – and renege on promises to begin the immigration process that would enable their wives to join them.
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Filed in: Culture, Current affairs, South Asia
Sunny your right this is an absolutely disgusting practice, although I had some idea this went on I had no idea of the scale of the problem. It’s good to see that some of the victims are beginning to fight back.
What would be interesting to know is where do the “husbands” who perpetrate this crime stand under British law. I know that under certain circumstances, if you commit a crime abroad then you can be charged here in the UK. Also If their already married in the UK and marry aging then they should be charged.
Also I know that there are many forced marriage units in the UK, but I wonder if they do any work on this as well
While it’s outrageous of bridegrooms taking off with the money and leaving their brides behind it’s is no surprise. Parents of girls should also shoulder the blame by perpetuating what is essentially selling their daughters off to NRIs. Who told them to offer loads of money and gifts to the bridegrooms in the first place?
‘Paraya Dhan’, ie. girls are a property that don’t belong to their blood families but are there to be owned by a future husband and his family is so ingrain. 99% of our parents still believe in this and so pass it onto the next generation.
Until we all start to change this, by encouraging women into education and a career so that they can become financially independent and bring up our own children to think differently that things will really change for the better.
Bah….So many crazy problems in the Old Country…
Parvinder Singh is absolutely right a lot of the blame has to given to the parents. Also forgive me if I am wrong, but i though the paying of dowries was meant to have been made illegal.
Can we delineate cases where Indian women have been deliberately ‘conned’ against those where the Brit/US Indian diaspora bloke only decided to get married under family pressure/duress and then returned to the UK/US and decided not to proceed with the immigration process. And I am sure not all these blokes were paid dowry by the Indian family.
Also what about poor Indian blokes who married diaspora ladies and then got ‘dumped’?
Bring back the primary purpose rule for spouse settlement applications say I. It’ll cut these applications right down and the attendant abuses like forced marriage and coming naïve ppl in the Subcontinent.
‘Paraya Dhan’, ie. girls are a property that don’t belong to their blood families’
We have a similar Bengali saying: ‘A woman belongs to her father in childhood, husband in marriage and son in old age’.
a terrible situation for the victims.
good point from parvinder singh. its the families who arrange these situations of course, the women themselves are completely helpless.
if you had $60,000 there are much better uses to put it to than trying to buy a husband. and if a family is going to buy a husband, they’d better try and find one that isn’t going to run away, or if they do, they have some leverage socially over them. Too often the problem is compounded by the fact that marriages are arranged on the word of some random third-party, and aren’t really ‘arranged’ very carefully. Too much trust placed in all the wrong kind of people.
yes it shouldn’t be about whether the victim is male or female, it is the same situation regardless of gender/. there are plenty of cases of ‘ghar-jamais’ where families buy husbands for their daughters, with the same prize dangled – a passport.
Ashik –
The Primary Purpose Rule?!?!?! (PPR) Good lord, I thought that we had taken that monster outside and clubbed it to death. Once again, the PPR invites the demonstration of a negative, there is no possible way that the PPR as a criterion can ever be definitively fulfilled. PPR is a mirage and nothing else and intrinsically would do nothing to help those mentioned in the article.
My wife is an immigrant to the UK and I give you a 100% guarantee that immigration by that route is not easy or a gimmee. It is a very hard and adversarial system and this whole, ‘reinstate the PPR,’ line is a lazy level of thought.
Out of pure interest, if you ever read this, I would be very interested to know what you feel my wife and I would have to do to demonstrate the primary purpose of our marriage? What evidence could we produce that would would satisfy you?
You may feel that given my experience I am coming at this from an idiosyncratic standpoint, so don’t take my word for it. I think that you will agree that MigrationWatch are not exactly soft on immigration. Their research (http://www.migrationwatchuk.com/pdfs/Other/10_8_immigration_marriage.pdf – see para 39) concludes that, ‘Re-instatement of the Primary Purpose Rule is not the only, and probably not the best, way to address the problem.’ [s caused my marriage immigration.
On the issue itself, whilst I have sympathy for those conned they and their families appear (candidly) to be leaving themselves wide open to abuse. My sympathy is tempered accordingly. Whilst it would be nice for government to be more active in prosecuting I struggel to see how it is the role of government to act in a preventative role here.
sonia:
“if you had $60,000 there are much better uses to put it to than trying to buy a husband. and if a family is going to buy a husband, they’d better try and find one that isn’t going to run away, or if they do, they have some leverage socially over them”
Sonia,
The problem is that these families are not actually concerned solely with their daughters life or even the supposed ‘prestige’ of having an NRI son-in-law, but more so to help them potentially move to the glorious west in the future as the family of a, by then, fully naturalised citizen.
One good example is the case in Canada concerning one Mr Sukhwinder Dhillon of Hamilton, Toronto and a string of such liasons that had across the Punjab countryside during the late 1990s and and early part of this decade before his murder trial (for poisoning his first wife to obtain life insurance money). There was one family to whom Mr Dhillon did exactly as outlined in the above essay, then proceeded to poison their daughter with the same tropical poison he had killed his first wife, to which the family were blissfully unaware and even considered offering him their second daughter as means to secure their petty dream of moving to Canada.
Parvinder,
“Until we all start to change this, by encouraging women into education and a career so that they can become financially independent and bring up our own children to think differently that things will really change for the better.”
Whilst I concur with your sentiments and earlier statements, my experience has been that of growing education and financial independence amongst women in India, however that in of itself doesn’t seem to be changing the mindset that you refer to – it is still in-built and largely reinforced by other factors.
Deep Singh – Is that actually true? If so (at least in the case of the UK, I don’t know about other countries) then these people have got a real problem.
Being a UK naturalised citizen does not afford you any right to bring family over directly. That family may have other immigration rights, but these are independent of the naturalised citizen.
My wife’s family have no right to come here to visit, let alone settle even though she is a UK national. They need to take their changes with the visa system.
MM, Rule 281 of the Immigration Rules deals with entry clearance for spouse applications. Apart from the maintenance and accommodation provisions 281(iii) also states ‘each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as his or her spouse and the marriage is subsisting’. Therefore a watered down version of the PPR is still being used. Albeit the burden of proof is essentially now on the immigration officer rather than the appellant.
How to show intention and subsisting marriage? Usually through photos of the wedding, videos and evidence of contact and ‘intervening devotion’ through letters, birthday/anniversary cards and regular remittance of monies to the spouse in the country of origin. Answers during interview at the BHC/Embassy about the spouses life in the UK is also important. Children in wedlock is a sure indicator that a marriage is subsisting (ie quality of relationship is good) and intention to live together.
This watered down version of the PPR is laughably easy to satisy. For example some appellants can only show used Calling Cards as evidence. ie. no landline bills. Some Immigration Officers/Judges accept this as proving contact between spouses and some don’t. Calling cards are cheap. However, the problem with calling cards is that there is no record of calls being made and the recipients. One can simply collect them from the streets in certain areas of London.
The PPR would delay family reunions but the marriages accepted would in my opinion have a greater chance of being more stable and genuine since the couple would have to work harder to maintain the relationship and go through the process.
Maybe a 5yr probationary period in the UK rather than the current 2 (used to be 1yr) would also deter some ppl from marrying abroad. This would of course fall foul of the Immigration lobby and is genuinely discriminatory to certain communities
‘Being a UK naturalised citizen does not afford you any right to bring family over directly. That family may have other immigration rights, but these are independent of the naturalised citizen’.
In the UK having a family member as a sponsor helps with the accommodation n financial aspects of many categories of migration. In addition if one wishes to visit the UK then having a family member eg. son or daughter engenders an appeal right. Whereas if one simply wishes to visit London to see Big Ben then they have no appeal right if UK govt says no. This is because of Art 8 Human right to family life.
Ashik – ‘This watered down version of the PPR is laughably easy to satisy.’
Have you or have you not been through it personally?
There is a certain element of mixed purpose here, I met my wife in the UK which, I accept, is not really the same as the situation that you (and the article) appear to have in mind of marriage abroad. Fair enough.
That said, the vision of convincing evidence that you outline is so weak I would struggle to make tea with it – not to mention that I can not see how that would help the women in the article. The notion that children, photos and phone bills are a sure indicator is something I find especially fanciful.
Your list of evidence demonstrates the sum total of nothing. At best it is a demonstration of a relationship. Above all, I see nothing that comes even close to demonstrating a ‘primary purpose.’
The system I went through did not pretend I could demonstrate a negative – rightly. The system I went through looked at evidence of living together and was certainly not, ‘laughably easy to satisy.’
More than that however I actually found some of your comment faintly offensive. You say that PPR makes marriage more, ‘genuine since the couple would have to work harder to maintain the relationship and go through the process.’ Firstly, that is at best a leap of faith. Secondly why the knee jerk assumption that I should need yours or anyone else’s approval for my marriage? Why should I have to work harder than anyone else or live my life in a certain way to keep you happy? The high-handedness is rather breathtaking.
Would you be happy if I said that your relationship was a de facto risk until you demonstrated otherwise and a minumum period of 5 years was necessary?
As to your five year idea, I do see where that is coming from. I do not however see why the probationary situation for my wife and I should be conditioned and restricted by social norms on the sub-continent. Granted, you don’t say that but it would be the effect.
I don’t care about discrimination to communities – I care that there is an assumption made that my marriage is ‘dodgey.’
In cases like these arranged marriages where one is from the “west” and the other from “back home”, they are in most cases employed for other reasons beside the formation of a promising new family unit. The intentions of some families in these marriages are typically economic/legal reasons which take precedence over the goal of selecting a well-matched couple. Not saying all families fall in the same category but there certainly needs to be more responsibility from the families and others when attempting to match 2 people from different nations. This whole ethos in Punjab where people want to establish themselves in western countries will eventually backfire.
Ashik – ‘In addition if one wishes to visit the UK then having a family member eg. son or daughter engenders an appeal right.’
It delights me no end to know that my wife’s brother will have the opportunity to be turned down at appeal as well as at first application – an opportunity we would not be able to avail ourselves of had my wife not naturalised.
Funny thing is that he wants to see Big Ben.
Maidmarian, well said in no. 9.
if there is anything anyone can do, its more on a social level, like name and shame – for short term – etc. long-term, the problem lies in the family expectations of gain from marriage, which is much more deep-seated.
Sonia:
Excellent point. While it is women who suffer the most, people forget that the men involved have not necessarily chosen their situation either.
15- as maidmarian says.
why should all individuals who have foreign spouses suffer because of idiotic arranged marriage family scenarios in the indian subcontinent. one might as well suggest outlawing marrying anyone who is not British.
but there is another issue to this story – that actually, as it currently stands, one might marry someone who is not British, and try one’s best to have them come to Britain to live with one, assuming said person is not in the country already. However, that is not guaranteed – really – it is still upto immigration officials – at the end of the day.
So the problem seems to me more complicated – that people are marrying off their children to people, assuming that it is automatic – that their kids will have the ‘right’ to whoosh off to wherever it is. And that they can just pay money to person x and boom there you go.
Obviously they are going to be subject to immigration control, and the premise is your spouse says – this is my partner, i want them to come live with me. if they don’t come forward and say that – what is any government going to do? force them?
Just because you’ve paid up your 60,000 dollars isn’t going to change that, or guarantee your spouse is going to play ball. Clearly what everyone needs is more education about immigration. And a social campaign is obviously needed here. The real problem is with dowries, and marrying your kids off to strangers, whom YOU don’t know anything about. How can you expect governments to do your marriage screening for you? Documentation to prove someone is single – ? Perhaps in the case of Britain, prospective families need to know about records in Somerset House – they can look it up easily, or get friends in the UK to look it up. Documentation to prove someone has a job? well don’t marry someone if you’re not satisfied! what is the suggestion – that the governments have to issue letters saying ‘this person is employed’..i hereby confirm. I’m sorry, but governments have better things to do – which they aren’t doing very well. If people want to marry their kids off, they’d better do the leg work themselves – rule no. 1 – don’t send them to a foreign country, to marry someone you’ve never heard of, where you don’t know anyone who can’t check on that person for you.
i’m surprised no one has suggested facilitating suing the -’bride-dumpers’ for breach of promise.
Or why indians aren’t using our famous hawala networks of friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend to check up on NRIs etc. i mean that’s what we use even when perfectly decent methods -like the post- exist – to send things to people, why on earth not to check if mr. man has a job, or is a reliable sort of fellow? or what the family is like? Ridiculous. But i maintain, this goes back to the flawed ways marriage is being used.
sonia – true, good points. I’m actually shocked some people are so naive…
It’s interesting to see the economics of diasporas which have fueled practices in which women and men are forced to get married against their own free will. The passport and the color of it are just a ticket to continue really questionable practices. But what do Desis do? They just co-opt something (like diasporas and migrations) into their pre-existing structures of dowries, arranged marriages, pressures to “settle down,” etc.
Those elders need something to do. Day and night, these uncles and aunties sit with endless cups of tea and gossip, stick their noses into people’s businesses, and plot the ruination of their children’s futures.
Someone give them something to do!
“i’m surprised no one has suggested facilitating suing the -’bride-dumpers’ for breach of promise”
Under which legal system?
Sonia – ‘So the problem seems to me more complicated – that people are marrying off their children to people, assuming that it is automatic – that their kids will have the ‘right’ to whoosh off to wherever it is. And that they can just pay money to person x and boom there you go.’
Ireally hope that comment gets as wide a reading as is possible, because it is superb.
My British passport does not exempt me or anyone I know from immigration law. My wife’s shiny new passport does not exempt her family from immigration law. That message has to reach the families mentioned in the article.
I have been astonished by some comments I have heard from my wife’s friends, many of whom operate under the touchingly blithe assumption that marriage certificate = visa. That is simply not true and the process, PPR or not, is tough and offers no guarantees. This is main reason I took umbrage at gibberish spouted by Ashik. I went to the then IND office, paid high fees and demonstrated my relationship was genuine with a file of tightly prescribed documentary evidence about four inches thick. I did not demonstrate the ‘primary purpose’ because neither I nor anyone else can demonstrate a negative.
I should also add Sonia that your final paragraph of post 20 is outstanding. It is not the role of government to indulge these families or indeed legislate for stupidity. Probably the education side could be improved (the immigration guidance is terrible and very legalistic) but beyond that the process has already made it hard enough for us genuine UK cases.
I wish you well.
Here is a link to a “story-based” account of the earlier mentioned Hamilton Toronto issue:
http://thespec.com/specialsections/section/Poison
The really sad part of this whole episode is that not only did the father of one of the Punjabi girls that was married and subsequently killed by Sukhwinder Dhillon, consider marrying to him his second daughter (allegded he wasn’t aware of the murder and had put it down to illness), when Dhillon was finally brought to trial (for various murders), this chap (the Father) even went on to falsely testify to support Dhillon, who had strung him on with the same promises of being able to move to Canada.
Whilst this case is perhaps extreme in its events and hence we can deem it (i.e. the polygamous murderer) isolated, the attitudes of various other individuals concerning the “immigration to Canada at all costs” is worrying and with due respect to MaidMarian, cannot be overlooked in the current climate.
deep singh – I think that you are absolutely right.
A (thankfully small) part of my job is to help people from overseas pick up the pieces after failed attempts at immigration. I see similar stories over and over again.
I don’t know about Canada but some societies, especially on the sub continent, seem to have a view that the UK is a place where the streets are paved with gold, jobs are plentiful and immigration is easy. In my experience many are genuinely shocked by the reality and get hit extremely hard.
I don’t know if this is a hangover from days gone by or a social thing or something else but the, ‘at all costs,’ sentiments you identify wrecks lives.
Of course, the article is at the extreme edges of this and better education is really necessary.
thanks maidmarian, i hear you.
“I have been astonished by some comments I have heard from my wife’s friends, many of whom operate under the touchingly blithe assumption that marriage certificate = visa”
aint that the truth. and never mind just marriage certificate, lots of people seem to think if they even know someone who lives ‘abroad’, (or someone knows someone who knows someone!) they will go and say, ‘bring me to amrica!’ or wherever. in the same way people say, give me a job. Ridiculous. Of course, it is part of the wider problem of expecting others to do things for you, and not standing on one’s own feet, and accepting individual responsibility, and that it will come down to you yourself, and not because you’re related to x y or z, or know x y and z. the end of nepotism basically – and its a big shift in thinking.
yes attitudes in the indian subcontinent towards immigration need a major reality check, and it affects the lives of many people.
as you say maidmarian, for people who actually have genuine marriages with foreign citizens, there is already lots of bureuacracy, some very high fees (increasing all the time as well..good way of making money..) and absolutely no ‘guarantees’ of anything. {i know a couple who had to get to appeal stage before the wife could come over from Hong Kong, they were lucky in the end, my friend was just about to get ready to move over there.}
I also don’t know why so many people assume the marital bond is so significant in the eyes of nation-states. in emergency crisis situations, this always comes to the fore. who is a citizen who isn’t, evacuations etc. embassies saying they will help family member who is a citizen of their country, but not the spouse/other family members who turn out to be citizens of different countries. Humanitarian reasons demand they overlook the rules, and actually the rules are citizens are the ones we help. In many cases, family members who arent citizens are helped, but that is the m actually going out of their way, when they have been able to. i remember the story of a british woman which got into the newspapers after the tsunami, because her husband was swedish, and the High Commission made a fuss about helping him too, when they should be helping other british citizens, and she was like but he’s my husband you have to help him! and the newspapers were outraged. Outrageous yes, but surprising no. During the Iraqi invasion of kuwait, there was a lot of this stuff happening when the Americans and Brits evacuated their citizens right at the start, and lots of families had various nationalities within the family. Marriage doesn’t mean an awful lot to countries, some pay more lip service than others, but the regulations are there, and there are never any guarantees.
Anyhow, the real problem is – as people are pointing out – what the elders are upto, and what they are forcing the youngsters into. the way i see it, this is forced marriage, and the spouses are being left behind. perhaps they wouldn’t be in such a good position if they’d managed to go wherever it was, anyway. but the main thing is, paying money to marry someone is fucked, having your family think you’ve been ‘abandoned’ is bad, and them trying to send you somewhere you probably don’t want to go in the vulnerable way they are sending you. And the other thing people seem to forget is this – even if your husband/wife sponsors you to come over, you only get 2 years visa in the first instance. And in the meantime, if the marriage breaks down, husband/wife doesn’t sign the forms for indefinite leave to remain, that’s it. A very silly way to immigrate if you ask me, because basically you are at the mercy of your husband/wife.
“I don’t know about Canada but some societies, especially on the sub continent, seem to have a view that the UK is a place where the streets are paved with gold, jobs are plentiful and immigration is easy. In my experience many are genuinely shocked by the reality and get hit extremely hard.”
yes, absolutely.
Deep singh – my comment. no. 21 – was in response to what the BBC article said, that police in Punjab were wanting ‘western governments to do ’something’.’ and that people were assuming that that something should be to alter their immigration laws. my thinking was that since the culprits were the people who effectively made a promise to someone, and then breached it, they should be the ones targeted, and if there were anything governments could facilitate, was to perhaps help bring civil action against said person in the country where they are domiciled. because the reality of suing someone in some other country is difficult. not to mention very expensive. So it’s probably unrealistic, but still more appropriate – as a recommendation – in my opinion, than somehow -governments – given the responsibility of playing marriage bureau.
24 – Desi = absolutely!
yep sunny, im shocked that people are so naive as well.
I know plenty of people who are getting their daughters married off to men in this country without them having met the guy. Although some have worked out (in marriages where it’s pretty much the woman doing all the compromising if not acquiesing to everything the man wants..which is why the marriage survives), other marriages have broken…due to a number of reasons. I find it astounding the parents can send their daughters to a foreign country to a complete strangers house all because they had a marriage..so until they signed the paper and nodded their pathetic heads, the person that was nothing to them is now their husband. It actually sickens me and I know not everyone feels this way but i just can’t get my head round it. So now this woman is attached to a man who is her husband she can bugger off to the other side of the world, with her parents in the happy knowledge that they’ve managed to rid themselves of their burden. Sick…
Sofia,
“with her parents in the happy knowledge that they’ve managed to rid themselves of their burden”
I doubt in this case, she is viewed as a burden (if that was the case, when even bother with a NRI, surely there are plenty of local men to ‘dump’ their daughters on?), the more likely case is either:
(a) Parents are looking for a route to emigrate themselves (as per my comments above)
or, (b) Have the mistaken belief that they’ve done their daughter a favour by sending her abroad
with a bit of (c) have some false sense of pride in having a NRI son in law.
Deep Singh, I think in the context of NRIs, NRPs and NRBs, there is slightly more status than local men…more money(?), living abroad, etc etc. The women i know who have come here are not married off by parents who want to come over. I’ve seen all of this first hand..and it still amazes me. I’ve seen it where the woman is so immature she hasn’t got a clue about running a household and is then thrust into a completely alien environment to boot. (agree with your points b and c)