(Disclaimer: If you are under the age of 18 or stupid, stop reading right now. This is dark satire, so please don’t write or sue. I don’t have any money anyway.)

Hey there, Mr. Middle Eastern bigamist. Feeling bummed? Disrespected by the infidels? Tired of having to work for a living? Well, does the government of Great Britain have a deal for you!

You see, in 2007, Parliament, which must have been swigging out of the same canteen as its spiritual head the Archbishop of Canterbury, concluded that Britain’s national fabric was not unraveling fast enough under the weight of its current Islamic occupation. Therefore it decided to encourage further Muslim immigration by extending welfare and other benefits, not just to nuclear immigrant families, but also to whatever multiple ‘wives’ the husband could import into the country, plus these women’s children.

The tab for these subsidized harems was generously picked up by British taxpayers, although, it appears, Parliament didn’t bother to consult them about it first. But the taxpayers know now and they are not amused. This revelation, which earlier appeared in the Daily Mail in 2007, was revisited by the Telegraph in February 2008 with added content: The practice of funding extra ‘wives,’ which the government apparently has been doing on the sly for decades, has finally been legalized and was unveiled to the public as a fait accompli.

This means that, although bigamy is still a crime punishable by seven years in prison if committed by a Briton, the same act if committed by a Muslim foreigner is now a ticket to lawful personal income. Benefits to the alien include not just money and tax breaks for each new 'wife' he can come up with, but also housing perks to provide extra space for the added family members.

The only catch is that each additional ‘marriage’ be performed in a country where polygamy is legal. Although a second spousal visa cannot be issued for a man who already has a wife in Britain, additional harem members can be brought into the country on tourist or student visas or on work permits.

“In addition,” the Telegraph article states, “officials have identified a potential loophole by which a man can divorce his wife under British law while continuing to live with her as his spouse under Islamic law, and obtain a spouse visa for a foreign woman who [sic] he can legally marry.” The article goes on to quote an immigration rulebook:  "Entry clearance may not be withheld from a second wife where the husband has divorced his previous wife and the divorce is thought to be one of convenience." Benefit payments for all the wives may be deposited directly into the husband's bank account, the article explains in perhaps unintended but almost unbearable irony, “if the family so choose" (emphasis added).

Within 48 hours of the story's arrival online, outraged taxpayers added 105 standard, printer-sized pages of response. You can read their talkbacks here.

On this side of the pond, trouble may be brewing in Canada as well because of local British-style laws in Toronto and Ontario that stand in opposition to the Canadian federal law prohibiting polygamy. As might be expected, it is the local ordinances that Muslim leaders embrace. Wives in polygamous marriages are recognized as spouses under the Ontario Family Law Act, Canadian Society of Muslims President Mumtaz Ali told the Toronto Sun, providing they were legally married under Muslim laws abroad.

To expedite the process, imams are now conducting “telephone marriages” with one partner physically present in Canada and the other in the polygamy-legal country where the marriage is recorded. The vow takes less than five minutes, Ali said, and a dowry is exchanged to seal the ceremony. The average welfare recipient with one child receives about $1,500 monthly, Toronto officials told the Sun, a considerable improvement over the British rate. Multiply that by four wives and x number of children, and well, you get the drift.

So, Mr. Bigamist, what are you waiting for? Get married and move to London or Toronto, and you may never have to work again. Not just married, but married and married and married and married. The hard-working sucker who has to finance this gravy train could spend 21 years in jail if he did what you are invited to do at somebody else’s expense.

I wouldn’t advise trying this in the States, though, at least not yet. You still get only one wife here and federal agents are constantly on the lookout for welfare cheats. As reported by Internet columnist Debbie Schlussel, Detroit-area police recently busted a food stamp ring that operated eight convenience stores, arresting 27 people, some with Hezbollah connections.

Detroit’s two newspapers wouldn’t name the culprits, Schlussel alleges, for fear of identifying their ethnicity and hence their religion. But she names them, all right, and includes a nice shot of one receiving an unexpected entitlement from U.S. taxpayers: a well-placed pair of handcuffs. So if you want to move to the ‘decadent’ west and live on the dole with dhimmis to finance your philandering, you’ll probably do all right. Just remember to stay away from the Detroit Police Department and Debbie Schlussel – and probably from the readers of the Telegraph.