Claims of a sham marriage between a Brazilian man and his Ballinasloe bride have now officially been dismissed by the authorities – but the groom cannot sign his own marriage licence because he is still not permitted to return to Ireland to do so.
That was revealed in the Dail last week as Galway/Roscommon Deputy Eugene Murphy implored the Minister for Justice to intervene in the tragic case of Kleber Silva Medeiros and his Galway wife Harriett Bruce.
The campaign to allow Kleber back to Ireland has already garnered huge support in his adopted home town of Ballinasloe and politicians – including Deputy Murphy and Senator Trevor Ó Clochartaigh – have also taken up the case.
Kleber Medeiros had been living in Ireland since 2011 when he came here on a student visa and was living in County Galway.
He was working and studying but in March 2012, unfortunately, his English college closed down and he lost his student visa.
He continued working and was paying taxes all along. He went to the Garda National Immigration Bureau in Galway, where he was upfront about his story and said he was trying to sort out his visa.
“When they got engaged last year, however, someone objected to the HSE – which registers marriages – saying it would be a “marriage of convenience”. It has since been established that this was an objection of a malicious nature and was totally unfounded,” Deputy Murphy told the Dail last week.
The couple went ahead with the religious ceremony and on December 10 2015 Kleber married Harriet in St Michael’s Catholic Church in Ballinasloe.
However, in July, Kleber received a letter from the Irish Naturalisation and Immigration Service telling him to present himself to make arrangements for his removal from the State.
He duly presented himself to the authorities – but he was deported the next day, and remains in Brazil.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.