Transcript

It was amazing to see the way they helped me out, and I did ask a couple of times to my advocate that ‘how much are you going to charge me?’ and she just assured me… she said ‘we won’t charge anything, like, just relax, we are just here to help you.’ And I just bursted into tears and I was like ‘I’ve just got two small boys, and it’s me, and this is what has happened. We all will be killed and I don’t know what to do, and please trust me! I’m telling you the truth, honestly I’m telling you the truth’ and she just had an eye-to-eye contact with me and she said ‘listen, Syeda, I know you’re telling the truth but you have to prove that. Have you got an evidence for that?’ and I was like ‘yes, I have got the evidence but I don’t know what to do.’ So, immediately, like, they contacted immigration solicitors, booked an appointment for an asylum case with the Home Office because they were concerned that my visa is going to run out within a couple of days. We did manage to get that appointment, did go to the solicitor with one of the advocates of Southall Black Sisters. So gave my witness statement, she assured me that ‘yes, we’ll go on with the case’ and then the case was in the process, and it was quite uncertain at that time but still a hope. And then, after six months of immigration process, we were just simply chucked out by the landlord. He wasn’t really very kind. First of all, I did not have any money to give him because of all the funds that I brought with me from Pakistan, they exhausted, and secondly, he was more concerned that we were illegal although we were not because our case was pending with the Home Office but somehow he thought like that