Entered into a marriage of convenience to obtain residence in Norway

On Christmas Day 2014, a Pakistani man and a Latvian woman sit on a bench in Cyprus. It’s only been four days since they met face to face for the first time, having met through the dating service Badoo. Then he proposes to her, and she says yes.

At least that’s what the woman, let’s call her Laima, told the Norwegian authorities. The man, whom we call Ali, has a slightly different version.

He claims that he proposed on the beach after two to three days, and that Laima took a long time to say yes. Laima has a so-called registration certificate in Norway, and in 2022 Ali applied for a residence card in Norway.

It did not go as he had hoped; now he is expelled from the country.

The spousal explanations were among the elements that caused the warning lights to flash at the Directorate of Immigration (UDI).

After several investigations, the UDI refused Ali’s application for a residence card. Such cards can be given to people who have the right to stay because they have family members who are EEA citizens.

Live in hiding without contact

Absent family

Ali’s story is one of a total of three cases in the period January 2023 to January 2024 where the UDI has refused an application for a residence card because the marriage is a so-called marriage of avoidance.

In other words, marriage where the main purpose is to obtain residence.

In Ali’s decision, which Dagbladet has seen, the UDI points to a number of pieces of information which they believe indicate that the marriage was a lie and a sham:

• Differences in the explanations about the marriage itself and the celebration afterwards.
• Lack of knowledge of Laima’s finances, medical history and family, which the UDI believes one should be able to expect to know about their spouse.
• In Pakistan, families are often involved in the process of choosing a spouse, during the engagement and at the wedding itself. Here there was very limited marking, UDI points out.
• After the marriage, they went to the fast food restaurant Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) and ate with friends.
• Laima is an Orthodox Christian, while Ali is a practicing Muslim.
• It is not stated that any of her family members were present during the wedding. Nor has she met the man’s family.
• Conflicting explanations about whether they lived together between 2020 and 2022.

“The fact that you explain yourself differently about something so central appears to be highly suspicious”, write the authorities.

– Refusals as a result of marriages of convenience have decreased in recent years. We assume that we do not detect all cases of it, but we naturally have little knowledge of how many we do not detect, says Per-Jan Brekke, team leader press and public relations in the Norwegian Directorate of Foreign Affairs.

UDI has no further comments on the matter.

“No reality”

It speaks to Ali’s defense that he and Laima had been married for several years when the application came to UDI.

Moreover, their explanations matched in some areas. Ali also claims to have had a residence permit in Cyprus before he got married, but the documents for this were allegedly stolen during a burglary.

UDI does not buy the explanation anyway. They conclude that “it is most likely that the marriage has no reality”.

Revealed Turkish man

In January, a Turkish man received the same message from the Directorate of Immigration. We call him Ahmet.

UDI points out that Ahmet has tried to obtain residence in Norway on several previous occasions. Among other things through a previous application for protection and applications for family reunification.

All have been refused, but in 2023 he tried again.

This time through an application for a residence card as the spouse of an older Norwegian woman – Marianne.

Forced to leave the country

“Very unusual”

Ahmet met Marianne when she was on holiday in Turkey in 2013, proposed shortly after and married her two years later.

When he last applied for residence, they had been married for eight years and lived together in Sweden.

Nevertheless, UDI believes that the marriage is a trick. They find it particularly suspicious that:

• The couple met in September 2013, and that Ahmet proposed in November 2013, through an apparently rushed courtship.
• Ahmet stayed illegally in Norway for five years, despite several rejections of applications for residence.
• None of Ahmet’s relatives were present during the wedding or the celebrations afterwards.
• Marianne is eight years older than Ahmet. UDI describes it as “very unusual to marry an older Western woman of a different religion” in the conservative part of Turkey where he comes from.

“According to UDl’s experience, such marriages are often entered into precisely to secure a residence permit in Europe and not with the main purpose of having a real cohabitation”, they write.

Dagbladet does not know the identity of the persons mentioned in this case, nor is it known whether they have complained about the decisions from UDI.

Postponing Dispatch: – Overwhelmed

Updated through TV programme

Marriage of convenience was put on the agenda through the story of Anne Marit Yuvali (62), better known as “AnneMa”, and Turkish Dündar Yuvali (27).

The married couple, who took part in the TVNorge program “In love without limits”, have been accused by the UDI of having entered into a marriage with the main purpose of providing the 27-year-old with residence in Norway.

The 62-year-old has previously come out harshly against the authorities over the decision:

– In plain language, it means that he is “faking” his love for me. For me, it means that they think he is a whore and I am a whore customer, she said to Good Evening Norway last year.

In December, the Ministry of Justice presented a bill on clearer criteria in the law for deporting foreigners on the grounds of arranged marriages.

The ministry wants that, in deliberate and gross cases of such marriages, the reaction is to be followed by deportation with a future entry ban. At the time of writing, the bill is still under consultation.