Tufyal Choudhury
Last summer saw the emergence of a new defender of Asian women’s rights, the British press, from the Daily Mail to The Independent and the immigration service.

During the summer, these papers ran articles dissecting in painful detail case after case of forced marriages among the Asian community of Britain. They bought on to the public agenda issues many feel uneasy discussing in public; there was a very real sense of having dirty laundry washed in public. This article does not wish to deny the truth of the cases selected but questions the motivations for their selection and the manipulation of these stories for a different agenda.

The reports illustrate a subtle but important shift in the pubic discourse surrounding immigration policy and on particular the primary purpose rule (PPR). Where previously it was argued that the rule protected against the abuse of the immigration system, keeping out of the United Kingdom parties to ‘false marriages’ and ‘economic migrants’; now it is argued that the rule is needed to protect British-Asian women from ‘forced marriages’. The PPR is transformed into a defender of human rights; the oppressor re-emerges as the liberator.

The primary purpose rule is the immigration rule which required a British national who married a spouse from overseas to prove that the primary purpose of the marriage was not to settle in the United Kingdom. Proving this was an onerous task for a newly married couple. Rejection of a spouses claim for entry meant years of appeals and sometimes separation placing the marriage under greater strain. In the late 1980s and early 1990s the rule was defended as necessary to keep out bogus applicants, economic migrants and to expose sham marriages, It is an open secret that the rule operated as a mechanism for limiting the number of brown and black faces entering this country.

Then in early 1997, the then new Labour government, without much fanfare, abolished the rule. It was no longer necessary for the newly married couple to prove that the primary purpose of their marriage was to come to the Isle of Dogs or any other part of the United Kingdom. It remained necessary to show that there was a genuine marriage. The removal of the rule removed the obstacle to many an application. Objections disappeared; visas were issued; babiji was coming home. Bengalis streamed into terminal three to welcome the newly weds.

Last summer articles began to appear in the British press about ‘forced marriages’; of Asian girls taken on ‘holidays’ to the rural hinterlands of India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, only to find themselves forced into marriages against their wish. And this time without the primary purpose rule the immigration officer had no way of helping them. The articles lamented the demise of the PPR, they noted the sudden rise in newly married couples entering this country since its removal. The subtext of these articles is simple: the primary purpose rule must be reintroduced; it is necessary for immigration officers to protect British Asian women. It is a strange journey into Orwellian double speak to find the likes of the Daily Mail calling for the reintroduction of the primary purpose rule to protect Asian women. In this New World the PPR and the immigration officer are at the front line in protecting Asian women.

It is crucial that we are not taken in by this; that we remain critical and aware of the real agenda. Is it just a coincidence that these articles are published at a time when the Government is carrying out a review of Immigration and Asylum law? The British press and immigration services have not been keen supporters of the Asian community or of Asian women. Their sudden conversion should be treated with suspicion.

None of this is to deny that there is a need for the Asian community to develop strategies for assisting women who find themselves in forced marriages. However, it is wrong to conflate the need for such strategies with a need for the primary purpose rule. The PPR is the wrong instrument for protecting women. It is an immigration rule applied by the immigration officers of the Home Office. This is the institution which placed immigrants in the past though the indignities of paternity tests and virginity test. To leave such a powerful weapon as the discretion given by the primary purpose rule in the hands of an institution which in the past has been responsible for some of the worst bureaucratic abuses of the Asian community requires a degree of trust that is without foundation.