If you are a foreign national and coming
to the UK to volunteer, please check to see if you need a special visa before
coming, otherwise you will be treated
like a criminal, slammed in a prison cell and deported on the next flight back
to where you came from by the UK Border Agency, as happened to our dear
friend Odette when she came to volunteer at the British Bird fair.
I don’t normally write about things that
don’t directly concern birds or wildlife, but this has made my blood boil!
I am not a great fan of uncontrolled
immigration; immigration yes, but uncontrolled no, indeed I have lived as an
immigrant for some years myself. I believe that defending our borders from
those that mean us harm is an unfortunate, yet essential, facet of modern life,
but recently, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll be pleased to hear that the UK
Border Agency has protected you from a 58 year old lady from Brazil who had
come here to volunteer at the British Bird watching Fair. This lady is one of
the sweetest, kindest people you would ever have the privilege to meet (if the authorities
had let her into the country).
Unfortunately she was unaware that she
required a special visa to come to the UK to volunteer and at her exchange with
the border control officer she excitedly told the guard what she was planning.
Her feet did not touch the ground. Ironically if she had lied, she would be
with us now; in fact she would be doing good work, for no pay, to help one of
the UK’s biggest wildlife events to raise money for conservation, another of
her passions.
She was able to ring us and let us know
what was happening and I rang the border control to vouch for her. She pleaded
that she would no longer volunteer which would then mean the tourist visa would
be complied with and I, for my part, said that I would be responsible for her;
I was told an officer would call me back, he or she never did.
I cannot believe that senior border staff
do not have the power to be compassionate in circumstances like this, or do the
words "computer says no!" apply here where compassion cannot be shown
to good people resulting in them being treated like criminals with no
distinction being made between them and those that really do mean us harm; in
which case we really are a small minded Little Britain!
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| Odette volunteering with children in Brazil |
Even if you accept that she had breached
her visa conditions, it was not as if she was trying to come here to fleece the
British Government coffers and abscond with them or deprive a British
(European?) worker of a job, she was coming to volunteer for crying out loud,
to work without pay for the good of others!
In addition she was the least likely
person on the planet to outstay her right to remain here if that was what they
were concerned about, she has property, family, a job and is part way through a
veterinary course in Brazil all of which she loves with a passion, including the
country itself, she is fiercely proud to be Brazilian and has no wish to live
anywhere else.
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| Odette is a seriously scary serial volunteer! |
What happened to her next left me feeling
nothing less than ashamed here’s the story as it unfolded:
She arrived at about 13 hrs on Saturday
from Brazil and was immediately detained in a small room, being interviewed for
hour after hour, until 02 hrs when she was informed that she was being barred
from entry to the UK and then bundled into a prison van with two people from
Iraq and whisked off to a prison with razor wire on the top of the high walls.
Scared now and without friends, she was
taken through several doors and gates, all of which were slammed shut and locked
behind her as she progressed deeper into the prison. A last she reached a
reception area where she was once more interviewed and underwent a medical
examination. It was, she said, a nightmare that she never wants to go through
again.
The next day she had the humiliation of
being escorted through the airport and frog-marched, flanked by two policemen,
to the door of the aircraft. There the police handed her passport to the flight
attendants and instructed them to hand Odette, and her passport, over to the
Federal Police upon arrival in Brazil.
We should all be grateful to the
authorities for saving our skins from this real and present danger in the form
of a generous, gentle lady who came to volunteer us to death!
She later wrote that happily she was back
in her beloved Brazil. She doesn’t suppose she’ll ever be able to return to the
UK (and why would she want to) and while she was enduring all that
psychological pressure she resolved to write a poem in which she talked about
the liberty of birds and how they freely cross frontiers and hoped that one day
we humans could be this way too. She left the poem in the ‘Suggestions Box”!
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| Contrary to what the UKBA may think, volunteers are good people who do nothing but sefllessly contribute to society, science, conservation, humanity... the list is endless. |
As if this tragic tale is not embarrassing
enough, this poor lady had just had a cancer scare which thankfully turned out
to be benign, but she had weeks of worry and fear before getting the good news
and was so looking forward to her stay here, helping out at the Bird Fair to
forget all her woes.
I don’t think that she will be rushing to
return to our shores, Britain’s loss, and in the meantime we will give
unfettered access to goodness knows who from heaven knows where, and we can do
nothing about it, except pay for the consequences when it all goes horribly
wrong and then to be told we cannot deport convicted criminals as they have a
right to family life.
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| Odette on a previous happy visit to the UK |
To the border control staff I say this. Do
your job, but please do it with compassion and try at least to be selective
about how you treat people, especially when you know that their only crime is
being naïve and above all honest.
