Forced marriage when you don’t speak English is a sure recipe for entrenched poverty, according to British MP Ann Cryer.
Welcoming a move to raise the minimum age at which someone could sponsor a spouse or be brought into Britain as a spouse from 18 to 21, Mrs Cryer said the simple addition of an English test would solve generational poverty in a wide area of Britain.
“Eighty per cent of all the Muslim marriages in the Bradford district take place trans-continentally, and you have got to ask why,” she said.
“It is a very large community now, and surely there are decent boys and girls within that community who can become husbands and wives to the people already there.
“Instead, they are trawling around the world to bring them in and bring in their poverty. It holds them back, it holds their children back and it holds the community back.”
According to Mrs Cryer, an extra three years of maturity would give a girl or boy who might not want to go ahead with a marriage a lot more confidence to say ‘I’m sorry, I’m not marrying that person’.
If people entering the country as consenting husbands and wives already spoke English it would change the area beyond recognition, and, in a few years, the levels of poverty would be reduced immensely.
Lest you think that’s small bikkies, Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said about 47,000 foreign non-English-speaking spouses entered the UK last year, most from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
This goes considerably beyond the debate about arranged marriage, which we’ve discussed before. It comes down to human dignity. And that measure must apply before and after such a trans-continental shift.
The scenario being painted is of a person living in refugee-standard conditions on one continent being offered sanctuary in a comparatively rich environment with at least some semblance of a familiar culture.
Such people could have little idea of the oppressive ceilings imposed by a lack of language, opportunity and climate. An additional three years of living would be unlikely to add to their wisdom on that score.
But English? The mere act of learning another language would expose them to a raft of different ideas, people and influences. Along with language skills would inevitably come a general knowledge that could better equip them to prosper in their native community. At least to envision opportunities that would never have occured without that exposure.
So come the offer of marriage into a far-away ghetto, the prospects there might appear nowhere near as alluring. Which could force those British-based hunters into scouring their local neighborhood more thoroughly for acceptable spousal material.
And thereby creating the driver for change that Mrs Cryer hopes for. The end of forced marriage, and the end of poverty.
Seems to me, the second string of this bow might be the more important.
