UK sham marriage tool found to disproportionately flag Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians and Romanians
A UK Home Office AI-powered tool intended to identify potential sham marriages may discriminate against people from Albania, Greece, Romania, and Bulgaria, according to reports. An internal Home Office evaluation obtained through a freedom of information r evealed issues with the 'triage' process, including the possibility of 'indirect discrimination' against people of specific nationalities due to potentially biased information that also includes the age gap between partners. T he Bureau of Investigative Journalism ( TBIJ) reported that an equality impact assessment (EIA) conducted by the Home Office used historical information from marriage referrals received by the Home Office over an unspecified three-year period and that any biases that might exist within this source data are likely to be projected forward by the sham marriage algorithm. A graph included in the EIA showed the number of marriages that go through the system involving specific nationalities and the percentage of those marriages that are given a red light. According to the graph, the nationalities with the highest rate of triage failure (between 20 percent and 25 percent) are Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Albania. Those most frequently referred to the triage system include Albania, India, Pakistan, and Romania. Civil rights groups and lawyers argued that the Home Office should allow transparency, independent oversight, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation of its use of algorithms to ensure that its systems are fair and lawful. System 🤖 S ham marriage triage tool Operator: UK Home O ffice Developer: Home Office DACC Country: UK Sector: Govt - immigration Purpose: Det ect sham marriages Technology: Machine learning Issue: Accountability; Fairness; Transparency Documents 📃 Home Office. Borders Immigration Citizenship Systems Equality Impact Assessment Legal, regulatory 👩🏼⚖️ Public Law Project (2021). Written evidence to UK Parliament Justice and Home Affairs Committee
- Date it happened
- 2021-01-01
- Organisation involved
- UK Visas and Immigration
- Product, system or model
- Sham marriage triage tool
This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.