Just try to deport me now, bitches!

Okay wait, please don’t. We’ve already dealt with that once and, despite it being immensely funny, it wasn’t actually fun.

Our family achieved something last week – something that meant much more to us than we had anticipated. Indefinite Leave to Remain – meaning that we can now stay permanently in the United Kingdom. We now have a ‘home’.

Yes, I know that sounds strange, but unless you have lived the way we do it’s a strange concept to understand. We left Canada when we were 21, nearly 13 years ago. Since then, aside from a single year back in Canada to get married, we have lived on visas. In China, Hong Kong and in England. These visas have a lot of meanings:

In China:

• ·       Get fired, get deported
• ·       Quit? Deported.
• ·       Change jobs? Have to leave the country and then come back. Or deported.
• ·       Misplace that red stampy thing? Deported.
• ·       Piss off an official by making fun of red stampy thing? Deported.
• ·       Forget where you live and go to the police for help? Put into a cell, fingerprinted and then almost deported (yep. That happened).
• ·       Accidentally commit a crime? Shot… And then deported.

In the UK

• ·       Get fired or quit my job? Deported.
• ·       During the recession get laid off or company goes bust? Deported.
• ·       Change companies but take more than 30 days to get a new job? Deported.
• ·       Don’t pay enough tax? Fined, imprisoned and then deported.
• ·       Take your kids out of school for a holiday in term time? Prosecuted, criminal record and deported. (I am absolutely serious here)
• ·       Get caught on the train having forgotten to top up your travel card? Deported.

As a family a lot can go wrong. So many people lost their jobs and their companies during the recession, which we are still all climbing out of. We never had the safety net that others have – not even the ability to ‘just find a new job’. Any change in my work would actually cause us to have to leave the country. Leave our house. Our friends. Our kids’ school. Our lives – to start over where? Back in Canada? A place we’ve barely lived in as adults?

So we do everything we can to play by the rules. We love the rules. We know the rules. We were doing everything by the rules.

And then we got deported.

Yes. Actually deported.  In 2012.

Paul called me at work one day – saying that 4 letters had arrived for us by recorded delivery, we were being ‘removed’ from the United Kingdom for being ‘dirty immigrant overstayers’. The letter stated in bold YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO APPEAL THIS DECISION. That was it. Nobody to talk to. No ‘if you don’t think you should be deported please call…’. Nothing. Just get out or we will find you and remove you, you have 10 days.

Cue mass hysteria on our part, and about two weeks of frantic phone calls, letters and contact with the Home Office from my employer, only to find that they had actually deported us in error and assurance that our visas were still fine –your updated residence cards are in the post.

Their response to me over it?

“The decision to remove you had been made incorrectly.”

No ‘sorry about that’. No ‘whoops’. No ‘just kidding!’.

My heart resumed a normal beat pattern and we continued on with life, following the rules like they were some sort of cult religion.

And then a couple of months later, I got a text.

What the ever loving &%$%!!!! Why? Why God why were we being deported again!?!?! In yet another panic, and shortly after my STROKE, I called the number on the text only to find out, through eventually talking to a manager at the Home Office’s enforcement unit (?!) that the text was sent to me as a wrong number.

Are you kidding me?!?! My sarc-ridden heart cannot take much more of this. It just can’t. I get the whole ‘we hate immigrants’ thing, but this is a bit much, no?

So that was sorted out and we were left clinging to the immigration guidance like a book of faith. Two more years. One more year. Six more months. Three more months…

Last week we drove up to Birmingham to make our indefinite leave to remain applications in person. We handed over our £6,000 and a giant stack of documents proving who we are, what we have been doing here as well as evidence that not only were we married but that we still liked and lived with each other over the last 2 years, begging them to let us stay. They could have found a reason, any tiny reason, to refuse our application. Somebody may have smiled in their picture. A bank statement from the last two years could be smudged. My employer’s letter signature wasn’t in English. Maybe I don’t make enough money to support a family of four with the cost of London rents. Maybe we have cost the UK too much on my healthcare. Maybe maybe maybe.

It seems ridiculous, but I work in immigration. I’ve seen those refusals before and how they ruin lives.

We left the office, after having submitted our documents, money, fingerprints, photos, facial and retina scans, due to return in a few hours for a result. It was the longest three hours of our lives. We could barely speak to each other, both of us sick to our stomach’s with worry while our kids, oblivious to the concept of visas but alert to our stress quietly chased each other around a tree in the world’s strangest game of two player duck duck goose. We finally caved to the pressure and walked back to that office as though walking to the guillotine. If we were refused – we had 10 days to leave the country. We would lose our home, our assets would have to be quick-sold, I would lose my job, we would lose our income… everything.

We walked back through the mall, watching the other families – secure in their plans A, B and C like we have never experienced. I wanted to burst into tears at any given moment, the pressure and stress crushing me from above like the ceiling was pushing down. What would I do if they chose any of the plethora of reasons to refuse us? Where would we go? How would we start over now?

The kids pulled us to the mini-arcade, as all kids are drawn like a trap for the loose change of poor and unsuspecting parents. The claw machine had Disney characters. Ohhhh those cheeky bastards know that we can’t say no if the kids recognize the characters trapped inside in need of rescue and a loving home. “Alright” said Dad, “let’s have a go.”

And then he did it. He actually did it. On the very first try, on the very first pound he actually got a Minnie Mouse doll. None of us could believe it. He couldn’t believe it. There was only one problem.

We had twins.

He fished around for another coin in his pockets while I prepared the twins for a formal shared custody agreement of Minnie when I heard a “whoop!” – he had actually gotten another one! Another Minnie! TWO wins on two coins on a claw game?? This was unheard of! Unprecedented!

Our luck had changed!

Ten minutes later we burst out of the Birmingham PEO office, our letters of indefinite leave to remain and our two Minnie dolls in hand – our luck had changed. Everything had changed. The world was suddenly in that moment brighter and full of possibility. We could stay here – I could change jobs if I wanted to. We could move to a remote farmstead in Wales and grow broccoli. I could start my own business. I could go work at McDonald’s. Or something. Our kids could grow up here. We could really, truly have friends. We could build a life. The letters in our hands validated us as belonging here in every way we could feel – the pressure lifted from my shoulders and we were no longer so explicitly reliant on my job for our family’s entire… survival.

We were free, we have a future here.

And the future is bright.

Just try and deport me now, bitches.