Phil@Stop the Traffik

When we heard they had her in the detention cells, Rach and I set out to see what we could do. Jane (not her real name) was a part of the church we were leading at the time in south London. A tiny, fine boned, but wonderfully self-reliant African lady from Ghana, we couldn't imagine what the police could want to keep her locked up for. She was being kept at a police station in north London, so off we went.
For some reason, entering a police station is always a bit of a trauma, its like when you see a police car when you are driving, you always slow down (or I do!) even if you are obeying the speed limit. If that's what it's like for me, a white, middle class Brit, imagine what it's like for an African on foreign soil. The police were perfectly civil and we went through to see Jane, huddled with three others in a cell that seemed only small enough for two. It was winter and she was cold. She had no blanket, no change of clothes, no tooth brush or other toiletaries. We applied to the police to be able to be able to bring her those things and they laughed at us. "Oh, they can ask us for those things any time they like" guffawed the seargent "they obviously don't need them". "Did you tell them they could ask for those things" I shot back. He paused and looked round at the women. They had no idea of their rights in a British police station. The policeman went off to get a blanket.
Jane's story soon emerged. She was, like many in our congregation, in the UK illegally. She came in on a student visa and stayed to work. She had been working quietly in a small factory in north London for a pittance of a wage. When the factory owner wanted to get rid of them, he just called the police and declared that he had found out that the workers hadn't got the right papers. The police then came and arrested them. The factory owner had the best of both worlds, cheap labour when he wanted it, and a good relationship with the police when he had enough. Whatever you think about illegal immigrants, what is obvious is that exploitation is never very far away.
This was brought to mind recently by the story we heard from one of the women in a Thai massage parlour. She had come into the country legally, and worked in a factory, but when she couldn't get her visa renewed, she lost her job. It was then that the pimp approached her to start working in the massage parlour. Isolated, excluded and illegal, she didn't see any alternative. Now she doesn't know how to get out of that kind of work.
Jane's story ends more happily, we were able to work with her to help her regularise her stay. The fact is that illegal immigrants, sans papier or whatever they are called in your country, are people too and are vulnerable to exploitation. It is impossible to hate and exclude immigrants and to also say you are against human trafficking. It's a sensitive subject, but it's also the elephant in the room. No one should be bought and sold and we should care for the vulnerable, no matter whether they are legal or not in the eyes of the state.