Marriage visa age to rise

There are a few obvious problems with the measure, however. First, if the people supposedly being protected from forced marriages are British Asian girls rather than women in India or Pakistan marrying British Asian men, it is unlikely to make much difference because women tend to marry older men, so the 25-year-old Pakistani marrying the 18-year-old (or younger) British Asian woman will apparently still be eligible. It will not only affect third-world countries with family connections to ethnic minorities in Britain, of course, but developed first-world countries like Canada as well. Thus, you won't be able to bring a 19-year-old in from Canada or New Zealand, but you will be able to bring a 16-year-old from a village in, say, Bulgaria or southern Italy.

It looks like more of an attempt at social engineering rather than a move against forced marriages, one of which many will approve, no doubt, but it will fulfil the former role more effectively than the latter, since the victims of forced marriage will keep quiet unless they have somewhere to go after they reject the forced marriage. As noted by commenters on the Pickled Politics entry linked above, there is often nowhere, particularly for foreign wives, and leaving an unsatisfactory or abusive marriage can lead to them losing their visas. Providing such assistance is, of course, more difficult and expensive than simply making it more difficult to get young foreign wives into the UK. As for the English test, I'd be inclined to agree; I've actually met British Muslims, born in the north of England, who speak English as if it's very much not their first language. Then again, someone with a degree from a British university is likely to have learned English a bit better than someone who studied in India or Pakistan, assuming it wasn't in an English-speaking university.

There is an obvious prejudice against marrying young on display here, as well as a stereotype about marriages in a certain culture. I know, from personal observation, that couples marrying when one is in the age group affected by this measure can have a happy marriage. An 18-year-old, after all, is an adult by anyone's standards. They may well have completed their schooling and be worldly wise. If a woman is from the sort of family which believes in educating daughters, they will do so (if they can) whether in England or in India. Universities in England are generally better-regarded than those in the third world, and if someone is to marry into a British family, they better off taking a degree from a British university rather than sitting on their hands in India or Pakistan for three years.

The more I think about this idea, the less it seems like a genuine attempt to combat forced marriage and the more it looks like social engineering aimed at breaking the family bonds between the UK's ethnic minorities and their "back homes" and at reducing their population growth. In places where it's just not done for women to wait until they are 21, people will circumvent the new rules either by living out there for a while and then coming over, or by living here and visiting when work allows - and others will just marry locally. These new rules might produce some difficulty for some families who want to push their daughters into bad marriages for their own ends, but more than that it will cause pointless frustrations for consenting adults entering into genuine marriages.