Nineteen-year-old Canadian Rochelle Wallis married her Welsh husband Adam in November 2008, two years after they first met and fell in love.

But now Rochelle is about to be deported from the UK and has been told that she will not be able to come back to see Adam until she is 21.

She has become the first unintended victim of changes to UK immigration laws which were designed to protect young British Asian women from being subjected to forced marriages.

In a letter to Adam's MP, Mark Williams, to whom the couple turned for help, the UK Border Agency described Rochelle being forced out of the country for the next year and a half as just an "inconvenience"...

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After the Forced Marriages Act was passed in 2007, the Home Office commissioned independent research from the University of Bristol to look into the effects of raising the minimum age to marry foreigners to 21.

The researchers asked victims of forced marriages - and the organisations which have campaigned on their behalf - whether they thought it would be a good idea.

Only one in six said yes.

The majority thought that the risks would outweigh the benefits and they specifically highlighted the "human rights implications" of "the impact on marriages entered into... by mutual consent."

But the Home Office, having commissioned the research, ignored it and brought in the new regulations which have caught out Adam and Rochelle.

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