'While the government hosted many struggling with homelessness with the “Everyone In” scheme, Chioma’s unstable immigration status meant she couldn’t access the accommodation offered.'

Lauren Crosby Medlicott is a freelance writer based in Wales reporting on human rights issues.

The public inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic is due to begin this spring, a chance for panel members to examine the UK’s response to the unexpected crisis. During the review, those who have been most affected by the pandemic will be consulted to find out what could have been done better, a chance to learn lessons for the future.

In a report published last week, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) released findings from in depth interviews with ten undocumented migrants in the UK. It explored their experiences of the Covid pandemic – focusing on how financial security, work, housing, and access to healthcare were affected by the government’s already hostile immigration environment – and calls for undocumented people to be heard in the upcoming Covid inquiry.

Chioma*, a 40-year-old woman from Nigeria, entered the UK six years ago on a six-month visa to visit her brother in London. Although she fully intended to return to Nigeria at the end of her stay, she developed acute medical issues during her trip and before she knew it, she had overstayed her visa. “It was a scary period, you know, because I couldn’t afford to go back and had to manage my failing health as well,” Chioma tells Left Foot Forward. “It became survival for me. I had to live to survive.”

Chioma was suffering with what she later found to be a large fibroid in her stomach that would cause her to bleed for days on end, leading her to become severely anaemic. When Chioma and her brother, who she was staying with, had a disagreement, she was left alone without anywhere to go. Afraid to access medical care with an overstayed visa, Chioma’s health grew even worse. “I wasn’t thinking about how to get back to Nigeria,” she says. “I was just thinking about how to survive.” With the funds she had leftover, Chioma managed to stay in hostels for a little over a year, but when that money dried up, she felt she had no other option except to sleep on the streets, going into supermarkets and 24-hour McDonalds to stay warm and eat anything to fill her empty stomach.

While she was homeless, Chioma heard about a job opportunity working as a live-in nanny. “I was lucky I got the job,” Chioma remembers. But when the pandemic started, near the end of February 2020, Chioma’s employers stopped working and no longer needed Chioma. Very soon, all of her spare money was spent and Chioma was once again forced into homelessness.

While the government hosted many struggling with homelessness with the “Everyone In” scheme, Chioma’s unstable immigration status meant she couldn’t access the accommodation offered. “So I basically just stayed on night buses,” Chioma says, describing nights she would sleeping sitting up on buses, just waiting for the sun to rise and her next meal. “It was just to keep warm. And it was quite scary as a woman. I was fearful of being attacked. It was just a lonely situation, being out there on my own.”

Dr Andy Jolly, a Lecturer in Social work at the University of Plymouth, conducted research on food insecurity, a huge problem for undocumented persons during the pandemic, in Birmingham over the last two years. He says that while most of the estimated 674,000 undocumented people in the UK reside in London, substantial numbers live in every region in the UK.

“My research found that 96% of undocumented households accessing immigration advice services in Birmingham were food insecure,” says Jolly. “In one particularly extreme case, a mother described drinking sugared water when she had no other food. Some described missing meals to ensure that their children had enough to eat, while others ate regular meals, but had to make do with cheap, unhealthy foods. One mother told me: ‘I don’t eat balanced meals, I just go for what will fill me enough like, if it’s junk I know at least it will be in the stomach for some time.’”

Jolly is concerned that the “toughness” the government tries to demonstrate against people they regard as undesirable is going to lead to many being excluded from all help. “The systematic exclusion of undocumented migrants is a form of what I describe as ‘statutory neglect’,  a deliberate process of exclusion through law and policy,” says Jolly. “However, in a pandemic this is not only an issue of social exclusion, but also a public health issue.”

From the end of February 2020 to November 2020, Chioma wandered around London, not knowing where she could go for help as her health deteriorated. Fortunately, a man at a train station gave her the number of Doctors of the World who linked her to a GP willing to treat her. “When they took my bloods, they were shocked,” she says. “They said I was like a walking corpse.”

The doctor told her that because she was sleeping sitting up on buses, her leg was swelling due to water retention. A charity assisted Chioma to get placed in a hostel that had an opening, where she was able to stay until June 2021, but she was back on the streets when spaces filled. During this time, she suspected she had COVID with a bad cough and terrible chest pain, but was too afraid to access healthcare. Finally in October 2021, Chioma found another job as a live-in nanny and is secure, for now.

“Public health should have been government’s number one priority over the past two years,” says Caitlin Boswell, Policy Officer at JCWI, to Left Foot Forward. “Instead, we’ve seen this government maintain their dangerous and discriminatory immigration rules undeterred.  

“These policies, which push people to lose status and then punish them when they do, have left people destitute, homeless, and scared to access care – making undocumented people’s lives almost impossible, and exacerbating their risk of catching and dying from COVID.”

Boswell urges the government to take the accounts of undocumented persons into their Covid Inquiry and prioritise the voice of all, without discrimination. “If government wants to learn lessons and fully recover from the pandemic, it must stop prioritising its anti-immigration agenda above saving lives,” says Boswell. “It must listen to migrants’ voices, including those who’ve lost status, and ensure that in the future, no-one has their life put at risk because of their immigration status. Doing so will not only protect the most marginalised, it will help protect all of us.” 

“I feel like the government has created a hostile environment for people like us,” Chioma says, referring to other undocumented people in the UK.

“We have been here for years contributing to the workforce to survive. And I met so many people during this period who were also like me. It is so sad. If it weren’t for charities, a lot of us would not have survived during the pandemic.”

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