Thousands of people are faking living in Ireland to secure residency for family members into the UK. The scam has been reported to involve UK nationals who want to bring in family members who are not a part of the European Economic Area (EAA).
According to a BBC investigation, immigration officials, lawyers, and accountants are believed to be the brainchild behind the multi-million-pound scam, creating backdoor routes into the UK. The fraudsters exploit laws that allow residency of the spouse of a UK national who comes to Britain after working in another EEA country, to be decided based on European free movement rules, rather than UK immigration laws.
That's because a UK national who lives and works in another European country for a period of time can be considered under EU rather than UK law upon their return. Having said that, they are allowed to bring a non-EEA spouse into the UK without having to meet certain immigration requirements that apply to British citizens.
The scam uses the "Surinder Singh route" which is named after a historical immigration court case. The route gained much popularity since 2012 when the government introduced a minimum income a UK citizen was supposed to earn before they were allowed to bring a spouse from outside the EU into the UK.
Each year, about 20,000 non-European family members come into the UK this way. The UK government has released a warning, asserting that the industry is a serious exploitation of the European free movement rules.
According to Det Supt Stephen Courage from the Garda National Immigration Bureau, fraudsters are charging nearly £25,000 for the scam. The facilitator sets up a company, and the individual who wants to be brought into the UK will be designated as the founder or director of the company. A work history will be created for the person, following payslips, opening bank accounts, and paying nominal tax.
It works in such a way that when the immigration service receives an application to exercise EU treaty rights, the individual will appear to have a life in the Ireland on their paperwork and documents needed to process the application. It makes it look like someone has genuinely moved to a European country while they have actually stayed in the UK.
UK Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill also had a say pertaining the white collar crime. "We are introducing tough new regulations which allow us to remove these individuals and ban them from re-entering the UK for 10 years."
