Senator David Burch has slammed Bermudians for entering into sham marriages, calling it irresponsible.

"The Bermudian Constitution gives Bermudians the ability to act like complete idiots," he said in yesterday's Senate session. "And with sham marriages they act with complete abandon."

And he said he would be looking at ways to deal with the problem.

"Some of the things we have seen recently are ridiculous. The fastest way to circumvent the immigration process is to marry and it is very difficult for the Government to say to a Bermudian 'this is a sham marriage' when the Bermudian says, 'no this is my husband' despite everyone knowing it is a sham."

The Minister of Immigration said he is sick of people treating the Ministry as a marriage counsellor.

"Bermudian woman currently have a preference for young Jamaican men," he said. "For Bermudian men the country of choice is Panama, followed by the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.

"I see so many instances of 'I love him', 'I love him not'. They write to me, the Minister, and say they want him gone when things go wrong and then the next week they write to say they want him to stay.

"It has gotten so bad there are a number of people I have told 'I don't want to see you come through the door'.

"There is this one man who is on his third marriage. His first was to a Bermudian, his second was to a Sant0 Domingo woman. He wants her gone with her two children from SantoDomingo but she has a Bermudian child so she can live here forever! After he told me that I then saw him again and he told me he was at Immigration to apply for permits for his Jamaican fiancee. I felt like telling him 'you're not going to get one here, go live in Jamaica with her'."

He said he was fed up of being dragged into the personal lives of Bermudians, adding: "Another example is one family, they all wrote letters, the daddy, the momma, the auntie, the uncle. They all wrote to tell me this was a marriage made in Heaven and that I was the most horrible person in the Island.

"So I said 'OK, you people are all so sure it is a match made in Heaven I will let him in'. Nine days later, nine days after he has been in Bermuda the whole family had turned on him and want me to do something."

He added that there are many who also marry to secure jobs, saying: "One foreign woman asked me 'do I have to live with him after I marry him?'"

He added that it was "disrespectful to the community" for people to partake in sham marriages but that at the moment there was very little his Ministry could do.