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Sham marriages are what we usually call fake marriages by non-immigrant travellers seeking greener pastures overseas. Upon arrival overseas, most of them see their dream as a mirage dawning on them that they cannot legally work and have to live in constant fear after visa expiration as they will be subjected to deportation if they had an encounter with the police or immigration officials, after investing large sums of monies to make the trip in the first place.
Most tourist visas have a three-month (90 days) expiration. To get legal status one must find a bride or groom who is willing to cover them as a spouse which will allow the traveller to adjust their visa status and offer them the benefits of their new found land.
I read an article here on GhanaWeb about one famous actor from Ghana whose roommate had tried to get him deported by running thru a red traffic light after he had demanded his monies which he had asked him to save for him and pointing him out to the police that he was illegal and sold drugs.
In such a scenario one will have to do whatever is necessary to adjust their visa status leading to the option of sham marriages. Some of these marriages are real, however, a large percentage turn out to be a sham. Most of these people have spouses back home but have no choice but to get involved in these Sham marriages. Some of these people become victims after paying large sums of monies to these fake spouses who sometimes get cold feet or simply threaten the person of reporting them to authorities and never refund their monies.
Notorious among them is one Ghanaian-born German citizen named Ama who took a guy’s money and when they had gone for the interview spoke in German to the interviewing officer that she had changed her mind, whiles this guy was sitting there smiling and thinking everything was a done deal. Being an EU citizen, she has had such runnings in German, UK and who knows where else?
Our own people doing us dirt in another country. Most of these Sham marriages have led to bigamous marriages where a spouse is legally married in one Jurisdiction and has another spouse in another jurisdiction which is a crime under Ghana’s law and other jurisdictions. People seeking to migrate must do a lot of research weighing their options and risk as the grass may not always be as greener on the other side as assumed.
If you were legally married here in Ghana and your spouse is married overseas and you are playing the sitting duck waiting for them, you could get some legal advice on how to get out of the bigamous marriage since getting help in such matters turns out to be expensive.
