IT IS meant to be one of the happiest days of your life when you step up to the altar and say the ‘I do’s’.

Standing there with the love of your life you are about to embark on a future of wedded bliss together till death doth part.

A wedding is meant to be a demonstration of the perfect love between two people – but more and more people are using them to flout immigration laws.

Between April 2014 and March 2015, the Home Office carried out more than 2,900 sham marriage operations resulting in over 1,700 arrests and more than 600 removals.

But last year a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee said it was “not convinced that the Home Office has a true understanding of the scale of the problem”.

Earlier this week Southampton Crown Court heard how one woman from Hampshire admitted her part in a sham marriage in order to get another man to stay in this country.

Ewa Nowak, pictured below, admitted that she had never met Babar Khan before they decided to tie the knot in Southampton and that she had accepted payment for the fake marriage.

Daily Echo:

In the past year hundreds of people have been arrested in the last year as people try to slip through the Border Force’s fingers.

Keith Vaz, MP for Leicester East, was chairman of the committee before it disbanded ahead of the General Election.

He said: “There is an industry of deceit in the UK which uses sham marriages to circumvent immigration control. Marriage is a precious institution and should not be hijacked to make a mockery of the law or our immigration system.

“The estimated 10,000 sham marriages appears to be increasing at an alarming rate. One sham marriage can provide UK residence rights to an entire extended family who would otherwise have no right to be here.

“The role of Registrars is critical. The Home Office should not only provide them with better feedback and training on reporting but also empower them to stop suspicious marriages.”

Nowak, 25, and Khan were caught out when registrars noticed that Khan couldn’t spell his bride-to-be’s name correctly and that the pair were disinterested in the details about their big day.

Border Force officials burst in on the couple just as they were exchanging vows in front of registrars and two witnesses.

When officers raided Nowak’s home in Wilton Avenue they found no evidence of Khan living there.

Previously Southampton Crown Court has heard how Khan was initially granted entry to Britain in September 2011 to study a three-year accountancy course in the capital.

But when he failed to attend classes, immigration officers ordered him to apply for an extension or leave by the following June.

It is believed Nowak was paid £250 to marry the 24-year old and now she could face jail.

Mr Vaz added: “It is absurd that we willingly accept as valid, marriages where the two parties do not attend the ceremony.

“This allows an easy ticket into the UK and this proxy marriage loophole must be closed immediately.

“Without taking these steps the Government will never get a firm grip on a situation which is spiralling out of control.

“The backlogs continue to blight our immigration system with no appreciable reduction. The use of the term service standards is a way of moving the goal posts to relieve the pressure. The Home Office need to act now to ensure this problem is fully cleared as soon as possible.”

Last year, a report compiled by the Homes Affairs Select committee said: “The organisation of sham marriages is an industry and appears to be increasing at an alarming rate.”

It added that the total backlog of immigration cases “does not appear to be reducing at an appreciable rate”.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We have taken tough action to clamp down on those who try to cheat our immigration system through abusing our marriage laws.

“The Immigration Act 2014 constituted the biggest reform of marriage preliminaries in a generation.

“It has given us a much stronger platform for effective, systematic action to disrupt and deter sham marriages and prevent participants gaining an immigration advantage.

“A new referral and investigation scheme was introduced across the UK from 2 March 2015, giving the Home Office more time and scope to identify and investigate whether couples are trying to cheat the immigration system.”

The Home Office refused to provide further information about how registrars work out whether a marriage is a sham then asked by the Daily Echo.

They said: “The Home Office wouldn’t give out that information because it would jeopardise future operations.”

Khan shelled out £4,660 in a bid to avoid being deported but he was jailed for 20 months for conspiracy to breach immigration law and two counts of breaching marriage laws.

He will be deported back to Pakistan once his sentence is completed.

Nowak is due to be sentenced on Monday June 29.