On Being an Illegal Immigrant
By Damola Awoyokun
My little daughter,
Hear this: as I write, Osman Rasul Mohammed, an Iraqi Kurd and a protracted victim of stinging penury has just jumped to his death having, once and for all, lost the hope of staying in this country of freedom and opportunities. He was officially asked by the immigration to leave voluntarily or be forcibly removed. Perching on the railings of a terrace on the seventh floor of an apartment building in Nottingham, Osman calmly placed his hand on his heart, looked up to the brutal brilliance of the British skies and freely let go. Six months before, over 70 inmates of Yarl Wood’s deportation camp (a place reserved for only women and children) were on a six weeks hunger strike protesting their unjust detention, the violent and vicious ways they and their children were constantly treated, and the racial abuse they routinely suffer. During that hunger strike, up north in Glasgow, a Ukrainian family of three: Serge Serykh, his wife, Tatiana and their stepson jumped to their death from the thirty-storey apartment buildings which local residents insightfully brand the United Nations of Hell. Two weeks before, the family received a notification from the proper authorities that since they are not fit to live in our midst, they must voluntarily leave the country or be forcefully removed. Like the Iraqi Kurd, the family too got composed, went vertical and let go. Dear little one, in a month’s time, you will be born into this beautiful country and as its citizen, you will not have to suffer the nonstop existential dread or experience the climate of official menace we your family members unceasingly suffer as perpetually unwanted aliens or illegal immigrants.