The reading of the banns of marriage on three consecutive Sundays has been a longstanding feature of English church life. A visiting couple sits nervously at the back of the church, waiting to hear their names. “If any of you know cause or just impediment why these persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.” Since the Middle Ages, banns have been the traditional legal preliminary to marriage in the English church. All this changed after the Immigration Act 2014. Since then, if one of the couple is a non-European – specifically not an EEA national – church banns cannot be used as the required legal preliminary to marriage. These couples have to inform the local register office. And they then inform the Home Office.
So, early on Saturday morning I was out walking the dog when I received a panicky text from one of my parishioners; let’s call her Alison. “Immigration is in our house. For James,” she typed. I know them well, both regular worshippers at my church and preparing to get married. While they were still asleep, six Home Office heavies had turned up at their door. They pushed their way in and went through the couple’s possessions looking for James’s passport. And then they took James away. And they wouldn’t tell Alison where they were taking him.
By the time I got to the house, James was gone. Alison was sitting on the sofa, staring into space, shell-shocked. She was surrounded by papers that had been flung on the floor, mess created by the search. Polite and self-effacing, James has been in this country for 14 years. And now there is a visa issue. But he has never committed any sort of crime or been in trouble with the police. Yet a Home Office snatch squad had bundled him away with fewer rights than a common criminal. And where to?
I promised Alison I’d go out and try to find him, suspecting that the logical place he would have been taken to was the local immigration enforcement centre, the grim concrete Becket House beneath the Shard. Everything was closed, but I got in through the car park and banged on the back door. The clerical collar was probably the only reason they opened up. I had guessed right; they had him there, a private contractor for Tascor confirmed. But no, I couldn’t see him. Absolutely not. I was his priest, I argued. I had a right to see him. They weren’t having any of it. And anyway, they were about to move him somewhere else. To the Verne immigration removal centre, an isolated Victorian fort on the Isle of Portland in Dorset.
As James was driven off to Dorset, I looked up last year’s report on the Verne by the chief inspector of prisons. “Levels of violence were too high and some of the violence was serious,” he wrote. Also “a third of detainees who believed they needed legal representation did not have a lawyer. Just half an hour of free legal advice was available and it was clear that many detainees struggled to obtain representation to fight their cases.” Also, “too much razor wire, and with restrictions on detainee movement, including to the chapel.”
If James and Alison had not fallen in love and decided to get married, James would still be at home in Elephant and Castle. No one has suggested theirs is any sort of sham marriage. It obviously isn’t. Nonetheless, because the administration of marriage has been taken out of the hands of the church for non-Europeans through the 2014 Immigration Act (yes, of course, it’s racist), perfectly legitimate marriages have become bureaucratic honey traps for those whose immigration status is unclear. Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights insists that: “Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family.” Yes, argues the slippery Home Office. Of course you have a right to marry. But we can still make sure you don’t make it to the church on time. Because we will deport you before you make it up the aisle. So much for our rights.