Marriage blocked after probe into bogus applications
Muhammad Shafi was one of 20 cricket players from Pakistan who went missing in July 2008 after the national team arrived here on a seven-day visa for a cricket tournament.
The Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) is investigating over 100 cases of suspect marriages or intended marriages between Asian men and Eastern European women in Ireland.
They suspect that two Asian men have set up a company to source women from Eastern Europe, primarily the Baltic states, and set them up with a job in Ireland in return for marrying an Asian man.
This will allow the Asian nationals to secure residency here by virtue of their marriage to an EU citizen.
Mr Shafi, 27, appeared before Blanchardstown District Court in west Dublin yesterday charged with possessing two false passports.
The court heard that GNIB officers found the passports when they searched Mr Shafi’s home at 48 College View apartments, Ballymun, north Dublin.
Judge Hugh O’Donnell was told that, after inspection, the passports turned out to be a counterfeit Hungarian passport and a counterfeit Italian passport. Judge O’Donnell fined Mr Shafi €250.
He had been due to marry a teenage Latvian woman in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, this week, but the court was told that wedding will not go ahead because gardaí have objected.
The court was told many of his teammates stayed in Ireland illegally and had either married, or intended to marry, EU nationals.
The case comes as new Department of Justice figures show a sharp rise in recent years in applications for residency through marriage to an EU national, from 1,207 in 2006 to 2,116 in 2009.
Last year, a total of 384 applications were made by Pakistani nationals, the vast majority to Eastern European women. Of the 384, 110 were to Latvian citizens, 50 to Polish citizens and 47 to Estonian citizens.
Justice Minister Dermot Ahern raised the issue of sham marriages at a meeting of EU justice ministers in Spain last week. Ireland, and other states, particularly Denmark, were concerned at the number of suspect marriage applications.
He said that, generally, Pakistani spouses were students or former students with no immigration permission, while in the case of Nigerians, who also account for a large number of applicants, they were more likely to be failed asylum seekers.
Fine Gael immigration spokesman Denis Naughten said his party had called for action to deal with sham marriages for 14 months.
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