UK: Sham marriages for immigration purposes.

Staggering. Quarter of marriages revealed as sham as rules are tightened.

The full scale of England's bogus marriage scandal has been revealed, a special investigation shows. One in every four couples tying the knot at register offices in the capital may have been a sham to get around immigration rules.

In the London borough of Newham, the number of register office marriages plummeted by 72 per cent when laws to stop bogus unions were introduced two years ago.

Across the capital, register office unions fell by more than a third, according to an investigation by the Evening Standard.

The number of marriages, including those at churches, plunged by at least 10,000.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "These figures are astonishing and reveal for the first time how Britain's immigration rules have been breached on an industrial scale.
"It is deeply worrying that the number of marriages which may be bogus now appears to be on the rise again in some boroughs."

More at the link.

And more about Newham:

Newham had the highest proportion of non-white population in the country at the 2001 Census. Also, the borough contains the second highest percentage of muslims in Britain (24.3%). According to a study carried out in 2006 for a Channel 4 television programme, it is the "4th worst" place to live in the UK; the study took into account crime rates, school results, pollution, economic activity and property prices. In the same study, neighbouring Tower Hamlets and Hackney came in at 2nd and 1st place respectively.

It is home to the 2012 Olympics and proposed home of the Mega-mosque.