Enforced marriage law forces couple apart

Nineteen-year-old Canadian Rochelle Wallis married her Welsh husband Adam in November 2008, two years after they first met and fell in love.

But now Rochelle is about to be deported from the UK and has been told that she will not be able to come back to see Adam until she is 21.

She has become the first unintended victim of changes to UK immigration laws which were designed to protect young British Asian women from being subjected to forced marriages.


Photo from here.

In a letter to Adam's MP, Mark Williams, to whom the couple turned for help, the UK Border Agency described Rochelle being forced out of the country for the next year and a half as just an "inconvenience".

But Rochelle sees it differently: "It's more than an inconvenience, he's ripping my marriage apart - he's taking the only thing I have and throwing it away."

Mr Williams says the couple's plight is an example of what happens when a blanket government policy is applied to a specific issue: "I think it is a horrific case - government policy that starts out with good intentions, but a blanket approach that nets in the most innocent of people."

With news interview with Rochelle.