The Dispossessed: Mother living in limbo with no job, no benefits and no cash
David Cohen
04.03.10
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Bent against the chill in a flimsy skirt and top, Ade picked up her children from school and walked towards Bromley High Street where she stopped across the road from a barber shop advertising a “wash & cut for £10”.

But Ade, 39, had not come for a quick trim. Rather, she waited for the last customer to leave before the barber discreetly signalled to her, and she and her family trooped into the shop. For the next 14 hours this hair salon, comprising a sofa, microwave oven and a lavatory at the back, doubled as a home for Ade and her family — her children aged 10, nine, seven and four, and her ailing 79-year-old mother. They would wash in a bucket, heat a few vegetables in the microwave, and bed down on the floor and sofa. At 7am, Ade would wake to clean the shop — her “payment” to the owner — and attempt to disinfect the boils that had appeared on her son's head. By 8.30am, before the barber opened, she and her family would have slipped out of the front door and be on their way to school.

This pitiful scene was repeated day after day despite Ade begging the social services department of her south-east London borough to house her destitute family. “There is nothing we can do — be grateful you have the hair salon,” a social worker told her.

When Ade's second eldest daughter got a chest infection, she dug her heels in and refused to leave the social worker's office until accommodation was found. “My elderly mother fell to the floor wailing and begging for mercy,” recalls Ade, “but the social worker called a policeman who handcuffed us and physically dragged us out of the building. I remember shouting: Am I a criminal to want a place for my children to sleep?'”

Last October social services were forced, under threat of human rights legal action by the charity Kids Company, to provide a home for Ade's immigrant family. The home they supplied in Croydon is a two-hour journey, via two buses and a tram, from the children's primary school in Bromley, but at least they now have a roof over their heads.

But that is just the beginning. Ade's application to the Home Office for leave to remain in the UK — having followed her husband here from Nigeria in 2003 and subsequently being beaten and abandoned by him — is still “pending”. It means that until the Home Office gets through its massive backlog, she and her children, the youngest of whom was born in London, are “without status”, neither legal nor illegal.

It also means that Ade, who is competent to work having completed two years of a computer science degree at university in Lagos, is barred from seeking employment or claiming benefits until her application is resolved. Apart from housing, she is classed as “having no recourse to public funds”.

Her children, moreover, are excluded from the 41 per cent of youngsters officially recorded as living in poverty in London because to government statisticians, illegal or “pending” immigrants like her do not count.

The London School of Economics estimates that there are 947,000 immigrants in the UK who are here illegally. Many come on six-month student or tourist visas that they over-stay — just like Ade and her husband — but most remain below the radar and end up joining the army of illegal workers propping up the economy.

Kids Company is aware of 300 immigrant families who receive no benefits and whose status has yet to be determined. It recently found one family sleeping in a shed. For many, their only means of survival is to turn to theft, drug dealing or prostitution. Ade has her own horror stories to recount, such as the landlord and immigration lawyer who demanded intimacy in lieu of services. She gave them short shrift. But how has she survived with no job, no benefits and no money in London?

Telling her story for the first time as part of the Evening Standard's week-long series on London's Dispossessed, Ade sits on a battered plastic sofa in her living room in Croydon.

She grew up in Lagos, the daughter of a cocoa trader, and she was still at university, she says, when her middle-class existence was shattered by a car accident that killed her father and brother. Unable to afford the fees, she got a job in a firm where she met a business administration graduate and at 29 married him, having three children in quick succession.

“In 2002, my husband lost his job and came to London,” she says. “He got work here as a concierge and a year later, I left the children with my mother and he brought me out, and I got a job, too, working as a security officer earning £700 a month. My husband told me he had permission to stay and that he was sorting my papers as well.

“We rented a flat in Elephant and Castle and in 2005 the kids joined us, followed by my mother, but instead of happiness, my husband started beating me. I discovered he was seeing other women, but when I challenged him he attacked me and threw boiling water over me. I was pregnant at the time and had to be admitted to hospital because he kicked me in the stomach and there was concern for the baby.

“The beatings became more and more frequent. In 2006, six months after our fourth child was born, neighbours heard me and the children screaming and called the police. They found me in a pool of blood but my husband had fled — it was the last time I ever saw him.” But Ade's problems were only just beginning. Keen to clarify her status, she approached her local MP Harriet Harman, who wrote to the Home Office to ask how Ade's application was progressing.

The Home Office replied that they had “no record” of her application, nor her husband's. “It was a huge shock because it meant I was here illegally. The Home Office said I should make a fresh application, but that until a decision was made, I was barred from claiming benefits or working.”

She stopped work and in early 2008 re-applied, hoping for a quick answer, but after a couple of months her money ran out and her landlord evicted them. Her one relative here, an uncle living in Bromley, took the six of them in and Ade moved the children to a local school. But eventually it became too much for her uncle's partner and she asked them to leave. For months they moved from place to place, living in squats and dingy flats.

Eventually, homeless and penniless, they wound up last year living in the hair salon. “You have no idea what it feels like,” says Ade, fighting back the tears. “You are so vulnerable, so desperate, if not for the kids you think of suicide. I had no clothes, no food. The children were amazing. They'd go to school and at night they would sit very quietly. Then one would say, we're cold mummy, we're hungry mummy'. They lost weight but hardly ever complained. If not for Kids Company and the Salvation Army, we would have starved. And we'd still be sleeping at the barber.”

Kids Company, she adds, provides her with legal aid and £50 of food vouchers and bus money a week.

Would she consider going back? “No, no, please God no— I have been here seven years and my kids are doing well at school. My eldest is top of her class and her teachers say she's one of the gifted and talented.

“There is nothing for me in Nigeria. The Home Office have promised me an answer by July. I pray for a good answer so I can finally end this nightmare. It's been two years now. Why can't they decide quickly? When I pick up the children with the other mums at the school gates, I feel like a fool in my charity clothes. I am an educated person — if I was allowed to work, I could easily support my children.”

Upstairs in her children's bedroom, there are three beds but no cupboard. Where, I wonder, are their clothes? “What clothes?” she says. “Each child has two outfits, the one they're wearing and the one in the wash.”

In four months Ade will know her fate. Until then, she's stuck in limbo

EloSela:

I just thought to post the article above to provide information for all pending travellers to the UK who may have desires to stay on after their visas have expired. It isn't easy.

EloSela:

I think she should go back to Nigeria. It is not Britain's responsibility to house and feed her or give her a job for that matter. Going by the some of the stories I have read here on NL, Nigeria is up and coming and people can make it there if they are willing to work hard. This lady should go back to her own country and work hard instead of depending on the British tax payer to fund her and her family.

kulyie:

i feel so bad 4 nigerians livin in diaspora,especially d ones livin in poverty.at least if dey were in naija dey still have hope dat someday d sun will smile at dem but livin in another man's country in poverty n dey'll treat u with disdain is really very pathetic.livin in uk is not by force if u cant cope come bak 2 naija afterall no matter how bad your country is,your country is still your country n no foreigner can treat u like a piece of poo in your country.d sad part of it is dat our cursed political leaders travel outside of naija,dey know how uk is,dey even take vacations there yet dey cant take a cue from dem n am sure dey know nigerians r suffering a lot in n out of nigeria yet dey act like all is well.nywayz d blood n sufferings of nigerians is on their miserable lives n dat of their uncontrollable wayward children

kulyie:

i feel so bad 4 nigerians livin in diaspora,especially d ones livin in poverty.at least if dey were in naija dey still have hope dat someday d sun will smile at dem but livin in another man's country in poverty n dey'll treat u with disdain is really very pathetic.livin in uk is not by force if u cant cope come bak 2 naija afterall no matter how bad your country is,your country is still your country n no foreigner can treat u like a piece of poo in your country.d sad part of it is dat our cursed political leaders travel outside of naija,dey know how uk is,dey even take vacations there yet dey cant take a cue from dem n am sure dey know nigerians r suffering a lot in n out of nigeria yet dey act like all is well.nywayz d blood n sufferings of nigerians is on their miserable lives n dat of their uncontrollable wayward children

Sure Nigeria is up and coming with more religious violence, ethnic hatred and oils wars amidst all the gross povery caused by years of corruption and pilaging by the so called ruling elite.

Oh I forgot to mention , also up and coming in more sophisticated robberies and grotesque cases of outright assasinations and murders.

bodsibobo:

@frosbel

Keep on consoling yourself. So you really think that an educated Nigerian without papers is better off in the UK than Naija. O.K. o, by the time he or she has wasted away their productive lives; all their mates would have moved on in Naija becoming MD's and Entrepreneurs while they are neck deep in debts, debts and more debts, except of course those that are involved in one illegality or the other.

You guys better wake up, I can count over 20 guys that I know very well that have re-relocated back to Naija from USA / UK / etc and they themselves know they are better off here in Naija than when they were wasting away in the UK / USA.

By the way, have you been to Naija (Lagos) recently?

proudly9ja:

From the story, Im sure we can read that she was doing well when she was working and her situation is the way it is because she can't work. Il advise she waits till July when the results of her applications out and I pray its good news. After that, tings will work out well.

EloSela:

Her story is sad. But it isn't Britain's responsibilty to look after her, her four children and her ageing mother. And why she be given a job when there are citizens who would also like to work? Nigeria needs to start taking responsibilty of its own.