Isabella Acevedo gazes out at the farmyard-themed play area outside the visiting room at the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre and considers the ugly symmetry of the previous week's events.Cue violins!
…
Unless an 11th-hour legal challenge is successful, she will be deported to Colombia on Thursday.
"I saw Mr Harper on TV," Acevedo, 47, says. "He is still with his rich friends, still earning good money. Me, I have lost everything: my job is gone, my friends are gone, my dignity is gone. In one day my whole life has changed."Well, yes. He, you see, isn’t in this country illegally. You are. His relative wealth vs your relative ‘poverty’ has nothing to do with it, save that it provides the opportunity for employment by someone.
That someone doesn’t necessarily have to be you.
"What makes me sad is that there are thousands and thousands of people in this country in the same situation I was in [without papers allowing them to work]. If I hadn't worked for somebody so important there wouldn't have been such a scandal."So…you admit that you shouldn’t have been here? You knew you were committing an offence?
Knowing how common her position was, Acevedo didn't fear she would be caught. "I never felt worried because I just thought 'I'm working'," she says.But we don’t want you to. Because while you are here, illegally working in the black economy, we are having to pay benefits for a UK-born unemployed person to sit of the sofa and watch ‘Jeremy Kyle’ all day. So, sorry, but off you go.
"I thought there must be so many people doing the same thing, I didn't see anything wrong with it.
"Everyone has the right to opportunity. And if they would give me my papers I would pay my taxes and that would contribute to the economy."
"It seems the system hurts people who are just trying to survive and have done nothing wrong," Acevedo says. "The laws need to change."No, I think we’ll keep our laws as they are, thanks very much, Acevedo. And our country. Why not try to change your country to be more like this one?
*coined by the irrepressible DumbJon
Update: Awww, never mind, progressives, you'll find another one!
Quite right Julia, couldn't agree with you more.
ReplyDeleteShe clearly knew what she was doing was illegal but did it anyway because she believed the person she worked for was above the law and therefore by default so was she.
Send her packing.
What I do not understand is why these people cross Hell and half-Texas to come here, instead of working nearer home where their native language is spoken and they don't get flung out as piss-takers. Oh, I wonder if they believe our streets are paved with gold and they can get the sort of 'free' benefits that would make them well off at home.
ReplyDelete"Everyone has the right to opportunity. And if they would give me my papers I would pay my taxes and that would contribute to the economy."
ReplyDeleteIf you go to Leticia in Colombia (I have) you will notice that immigration is much stricter than in Bogota. The reason is to stop illegl immigration from Peru (safer but a lot poorer).
Of course Colombia (4 times the size of the UK) has a right to control immigration.
I just wish that she would let us have that right.
This bit
"She fears for her safety in Colombia, a country where, as she puts it, "anything can happen". "
Is a little dishonest Bogota is safer than Washington.
Of course violence can happen in the UK too
"Her husband, who had joined her in England but from whom she was now separated, had been attacked on the street and left seriously ill from a head injury."
If Colombia is so bad, why did her husband go back?
@" Robert the Biker said...
ReplyDeleteOh, I wonder if they believe our streets are paved with gold and they can get the sort of 'free' benefits that would make them well off at home."
Speaking from experience it is the benefits. I know people who came here for benefits from Colombia.
Not all do, my wife is Colombian and came here to improve her English and teach Spanish.
Of course she only gets child benefit. If she had become a pro single mum she would be a lot better off.
PS I have known Latin Americans who were in the UK but left because their visa was denied. If we were to let someone like this stay, we are slapping honest immigrants in the face.
ReplyDeleteWhilst the dictatorship, through their UKIP gob pieces, try to make us think the problem only comes from the E.U.
ReplyDeleteHow would not being in the E.U stop the likes of the bitch in the origional post?
I remember back in the days of usenet (uk.politics.misc), having a conversation regarding 2 Polish girls here illegally. This was before the EU right of movement malarky.
ReplyDeleteMy take was that if they were tidy looking, I didn't see a problem, but by all accounts they were a pair of heifers, so the decision to send them back was appropriate.
After much discussion, the consensus was that yes, an immigration policy based on this seemed fair.
This was long before the writers of "Ali G" nicked it (Where's my friggin royalties, or at least an acknowledgement?).
The woman in question looks quite tidy from what I can see, although she may have a face like a llama chewing tobacco, it's hard to tell what with the pixelation, but I have to say, I still kinda hold the same view..
"Send her packing."
ReplyDeleteHappily, they did! One down, millions more to go..
"Of course Colombia (4 times the size of the UK) has a right to control immigration.
I just wish that she would let us have that right."
Indeed!
" If we were to let someone like this stay, we are slapping honest immigrants in the face."
Spot on! And the thing that rankles with me the most.