Under the radar

THREE JAMAICANS living in London, who were forced to look over their shoulders in fear, had their illegal statuses reversed in June, ending decades of dependence and hardship worsened by ill health.

Former Tivoli Gardens resident Neville Nelms, Karen Duhaney of Havendale in St Andrew, and Waterhouse native Clifton Fraser, who have all been living in England for more than 20 years, were granted leave to remain for at least two and a half years in the first instance.

The Jamaicans are breathing easier after their applications under the 20-year route to indefinite leave to remain was approved. At the end of the two and a half years they will have to apply for a renewal.

Under the 20-year rule, a person does not have to have lived in the United Kingdom (UK) lawfully, but simply continuously for at least 20 years. It falls under the UK’s Private Life immigration rules.

In a Gleaner interview on Tuesday, Duhaney recalled travelling to England in 2002 and while on her visitors’ visa, applied to attend college. This resulted in annual extensions to her stay through the British Home Office, but in 2007, she said, she became ill and could no longer continue with school.

The Home Office rejected her application for an extension on the basis that she was not showing progress in school. Duhaney filed an appeal, but that, too, was rejected.

“My suffering start from there,” the 61-year-old Jamaican said.

“I had no work, and walking doing little things here and there for people with my illegal status, they took advantage. Sometimes I’d work, but they never paid me. I went through a lot, honestly,” she added.

A relative, who also lives in London, she said, did not extend a helping hand.

She said that she spent the last 20 years living like a “nobody” who received no attention or help upon request and plea.

This left her feeling useless, she said, though she was the breadwinner for her family back home in Jamaica.

She said that she could not return to the island because of that dependency.

“The way how I was living and what I went through, I got depressed. I just wanted to do away with life, but I look back and said to myself, ‘Why should I kill myself? I know it’s hard but I have something to live for. I have my family and they are depending on me.’

“So I (am) there, and I batter-batter until the law came in, where if you in the country for 20 years [and] your record is clean, you can apply to stay,” Duhaney said.

Life improved significantly

She contacted public law solicitor of MTC Solicitors, Naga Kandiah, who handled her case pro bono.

She said, at the time, she had only £200.

Kandiah took half of the money and told her not to worry about the cost of the process.

In June, Duhaney was informed that her application had been successful.

Since that time, she said that her life has improved significantly.

“I am happy. I take sick, I cannot work and the government look after me. I get my money. I even get a healthcare worker to assist me. They are now looking for a property for me on the ground-floor level,” said Duhaney, who suffers from arthritis.

She is making plans to visit Jamaica in the near future, she said.

Nelms, who has also been in England since 2002, was diagnosed with stage-one prostate cancer in 2018.

The 68-year-old man, who said that he was first living in the United States but was subsequently deported in 1996, left for Europe after a friend introduced him to a woman there.

But after a year of living with the woman, he said that he was left out in the cold. She said she needed space, he recounted, and so he was asked to leave. He had not been working.

With no right to recourse to public funds, Nelms could not take care of his everyday living needs, including food and clothing.

Additionally, owing to having no status in the United Kingdom, he was unable to seek employment and was left with no option but to walk door to door offering manual labour service to make ends meet.

His struggle to make a living daily inevitably made his life a living limbo.

“I was up and down all over the place. Bouncing from east London to south London to north London. I was all over and looking over my shoulder. My friends always warned me to know my postcode, because if police stopped me and I didn’t know it, they would take me in and question me, and that would be it,” he told The Gleaner.

But after years of flying under the radar, Nelms was forced out.

While at a weekly get-together with friends he fell unconscious.

He recalled that this happened three times before his friends insisted that he needed to see a doctor.

Through associates, they got him to see a doctor at a nearby clinic who, after several tests, told him that he had cancer and high blood pressure.

His law-abiding status did not earn him the same privilege as UK citizens, and he was billed thousands of pounds for treatments, including mandatory consultations and blood tests.

Kandiah’s intervention saw the charges being dismissed.

“I owe him big time,” said Nelms.

He said his health status has seen a major improvement, with fewer treatments now.

Fraser summed up his 21 years in England as “a struggle”, noting that his illegal status began in 2004, two years after arriving on a visitors’ visa.

He said soon after arriving, he enrolled in college but later encountered “financial crisis”, which caused him to flunk out. He said he was also unable to pay for his visa extension.

Since then, his application for leave to remain was denied twice. The second denial came with a letter that said he was liable for detention.

“I did anything to survive, but nothing illegal. A little gardening and handyman work off the record,” he said.

At the onset of the pandemic, Fraser became ill and had developed breathing challenges that he could not seek medical assistance for.

“I couldn’t do anything because I had to walk on such a thin line. You can’t draw any attention to yourself, because if you get stopped by police, everything is flagged for you in the system,” he said.

“You had to be so careful, I honestly don’t know how I did it for so long. You go on the bus, you had to make sure you had your bus fare. You can’t take any chance. They could just see you on the road and because racism is institutionalised here, they could just stop me as a black man and check me out,” the 57-year-old added.

Still, he refused to return to Jamaica, hoping all the while that “something can happen”.

He said that he had two children to provide for in Jamaica.

With no stability, he said that he received assistance from his church and others until a friend introduced him to Kandiah.

“I stayed under the radar until [I met] him. Respect due to him. He’s not a Jamaican, but he help us so much. He has a good quality in him to help less-fortunate people. He’s a humanitarian,” Fraser said.

Kandiah submitted his application in 2021, along with a second application to waive costs.

Fraser told The Gleaner that he intends to visit Jamaica once he attains the leave to remain indefinite status.

In a statement to The Gleaner, Kandiah noted that Jamaicans have made “innumerable contributions” to British culture and have a long history in the UK, pointing to those who fought in wars and helped to rebuild the country.

“Although other Commonwealth nations may have found their close ties to the UK helpful, I believe that Jamaicans have not. I further believe in compassion and the pursuit of justice, both of which I attempt to live by,” he said.

“No matter where we are from, we are all essentially the same kind of people,” he added.