There are at least 1.4 million migrants living in the UK without access to public funds – that means no social security, no temporary accommodation and no access to domestic violence refuges.
When the pandemic first hit, through my work at the food bank that I set up with a group of friends, I saw first-hand the vulnerability of people struggling with their immigration status.
I knew I had to do something to help undocumented migrants but I wasn’t sure if I was committing a crime by doing so. I decided that people’s dignity was more important than harsh rules at a time of crisis, and I started gathering volunteers and distributing food to a few families. Soon afterwards, I received requests from hundreds of undocumented and vulnerable people desperate for help.
Now I’m worried that the cost of living crisis could be about to make things even worse. The users of my service are not only frightened by the virus and the Home Office, but also by hunger. Delivery drivers, families with young children, pregnant women, older people, victims of domestic violence and others working in restaurants are among those forgotten by the system. Many have lost their income and homes, putting them at risk of exploitation.
My food bank and others are documented in a collaborative film between the Guardian video team and myself. It was extremely difficult to get undocumented people to speak on camera for fear of the authorities. We filmed Josef, who has been living in London for 19 years and has never been to a doctor because he is undocumented. Josef has asthma and went to a hospital to get the Covid-19 vaccine but was denied because of his immigration status. Josef has been an invaluable part of the team helping many hundreds of families avoid destitution while struggling with his own life.
In the film, we speak to Adam, a Deliveroo driver who delivered food to households during the lockdown and who is sadly struggling to make his living as a result of his immigration status. He feels trapped and hopeless about his future.
Michel, a young lady who was initially trafficked into the UK for domestic labour when she was a child, told me that she chose to work for the NHS during the first lockdown. She felt a moral obligation to help maintain the cleanliness of the hospital, risking her own life in doing so, yet she feels treated as a second-class citizen for not having the same rights as people holding a British passport.
Halfway through filming, I had to make the very difficult decision to close my food bank. A lot of my volunteers had gone back to working in the informal economy. I struggled to find a permanent venue for the project until finding a short-term space provided by a local church. The generosity and kindness of places like that contributed to helping us feed those in need, but demand is slowly increasing, pushing against the limits of what we can provide. Nicole, who runs another food bank, estimates that 80% of her users have no recourse to public funds and she is now getting calls from people asking her to pay for their electricity, something she doesn’t have the funds to do.
At the same time, Nicole’s family has also been struggling with their own immigration status, which has pushed them further into debt. Nicole’s cousin Geatan arrived in the UK when he was just 10. He is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and had to flee the civil war with his family. Like me, he also wanted to be a film-maker but student finance declined his grant application as he had no access to public funds. He told me that he had started feeling different from others when he was in sixth form as he was not allowed to travel abroad with his classmates because of his immigration status. Today, Geathan is 26 and still in the same situation.
As you’ll see from our film, the most vulnerable people in society suffer the most in times of hardship. Instead of our government helping those in need in such desperate times, the most vulnerable people have to rely on kindness from strangers and use food banks to get their everyday necessities.
While some people will be adjusting to the new normal, for a lot of people nothing about their situation has changed: they continue to stay under the radar and are vulnerable to crisis. Meanwhile, the people who they trust to help them, the people who are operating separately from the authorities, are struggling too.
Lynda Ouazar is a human rights activist and film-maker