Deportations

I subscribed to a post on Change.org about a teenager about to be deported for being 18. The anti-deportation plea failed and the organisers asked us to phone the airline the British Government were dealing with in order to dispose of the problem:

“

We’ve just heard that Yashika has been told she is being taken to Heathrow right now for an Air Mauritius flight at 9pm. On Sunday Air Mauritius were due to take Yashika on a 5pm flight but after the thousands of phone calls and emails you made, Yashika remained in the country. Please call Air Mauritius now on 0207 434 4375. and ask them not to take part in the deportation — they can refuse to fly Yashika. They have a chance to do the right thing. Air Mauritius telephone lines are open 24 hours a day. Please help us, it is heartless to toy with a young person for weeks like this and to tear her away from her family before finishing her exams. Call Air Mauritius now on 0207 434 4375. Thank you, Zoe Thompson along with Yashika’s friends and students of Oasis School. P.S. You can also send a message to Air Mauritius on Twitter here.

“

I didn’t see the message until just now (midnight) so I was too late to phone. What are you supposed to say to someone who has no idea what any of this is about?

I barely know the details myself.

Ah well, I put the phone down and came here instead.

What happened was that the child was born in Mauritius and came here when her parents fled (for reasons I don’t know.) The parents are still here I gather though what exactly letting the girl stay for exams would accomplish I can’t say. Whether she was allowed to stay until the results of the exams were known so she could perhaps use them in a CV where her life will be in danger or not; the kid is now arriving in a strange land with alien customs and as far as I know no means of support.

A child making its way in the world for the first few years of adult life needs an incredible amount of support. And that is in a land where you are not hounded for religious or political purposes.

Apparently she was well educated and of above normal standards of intelligence. What the hell the Government thought it was doing sending her anywhere against her will is beyond my understanding.

Not my problem?

What more can I do anyway?

Just one of those things?

Who do I blame?

I don’t know what is going on in Mauritius. I am barely up to scratch with things in the Ukraine. But I think I have a grasp of what is going on in Venezuela. (The CIA has instigated the trouble it always wanted to rain down on Hugo Chavez.) And that is about the extent of my abilities to read between the lines of US and British led news agencies.

I’d never even heard of Mauritius.Who the hell are they and where do they fit on an atlas?

I haven’t the foggiest. And that is how everyone wants it.

But there is nothing they can whisper in secret, these days, that won’t be shouted from the mountain tops. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my only consolation.