Marie

An asylum policy which is brutal has a certain logic to it. Your claim fails, you are put on a plane. Cruel, maybe, but consistent. An asylum policy which makes you wait around for years, prevents you from working, and refuses you state support – that is a little harder to understand.

Marie, a French-speaker from the Cameroon, is 32. She arrived in 2003 after bringing a court case against a relative who raped her. The relative, who was a mover and shaker in the Cameroon government, wasn’t going to forgive her easily. She was followed, threatened and given the clear message: leave, or die.

She arrived in Britain, where she had a friend, and claimed asylum. While her claim was being considered, she began working for a hamburger chain and took a second job as a caretaker. In the hamburger chain she did well, rising quickly to manager.

“ My boss liked me,” she says. “I worked hard, was reliable, and the customers liked me.”
In the meantime, her claim was refused, and subsequently her appeal. But having no other means of support, she carried on working, earning now £7 an hour.

After about a year working in MacDonald’s the police arrived with the immigration authorities and arrested her. She has no idea who reported on her, or why.

In 2004 she was taken to the police station, and jailed for four days (“it was really cold”, she says). She was then taken to Gatwick detention centre, where she assumed – during the week she spent there – that she would be put on a plane home. Instead, she was taken to another detention centre – Oakington, near Cambridge.

“In Gatwick, at least they cared,” she says. “But in Oakington it was awful. The officers shouted at you, treated us very badly, told us to eat the food. We felt like dogs.”

She was there only a week before being released in May. They gave her a letter which said she was liable for detention and must remain at her address. She had to report each month to an immigration officer.

She went back to live with her friend, cast into limbo. Having no financial support, having been told she was not allowed to work, and not wishing to be a burden on her friend, she applied to the Home Office for financial assistance. They told her that because she had been caught working illegally, she was not eligible. 

“ So I have been dependent on my friend since then,” she says.

In 2004 she received another letter, telling her to present herself to the immigration authorities in ……… October 2007.

She has no idea what will happen to her when she does. “They might arrest me, they might deport me,” she says. “Or again they might not – who knows?”

There is no one there now for her in Cameroon, she says. Her mother died last year. Her father died years ago. She has lost touch with her sisters.

“ My family now is here,” she says. The Pentecostal church she attends gives her a sense of community. Her best friend and her friends have become family to her. She cleans the odd house, does odd jobs, but suffers intensely from the limbo she is in.

It got so bad at one point that she needed psychiatric help. “They thought maybe I was going mad,” she laughs.

If she were allowed to stay, she says, “I would go and get a qualification and do something for myself.”

“ You read in the newspapers that people like me just come here to live on benefits. But we don’t want to live on benefits. We want to work, make a contribution, better ourselves and serve society.”

She hopes it will happen. Hope – and her friends – is really all she has. She thinks maybe she would like to start a family, but it’s hard to start a relationship.

“ When you tell them about your situation, people get scared. They think: if I get involved with her maybe she will be deported.”

Read more stories: