It’s still us and them
Working at the immigration department and having to make decisions concerning the future of people who attempt to stay in this country is a “soul-destroying procedure,” the head of the Immigration Office confessed to a journalist of this paper last week. If Anny Shakalli could she would give Cypriot visas to all immigrants who ask for them but she simply can’t do it. If she did, soon in Cyprus we would have a situation similar to that that has occurred in France where “all the immigrants, who had been sidelined and unemployed, revolted and set fire to Paris”. Besides, these people are constantly lying and attempt to exploit their children as an excuse to stay in the Republic. So summing it up, overworked Ms Shakalli is here to protect us from bad foreign arsonists and liars. Plus she has a heart of gold and agonises over each of her deportation projects.
This is the same woman who, a few months ago, during the war in Lebanon, was cited in the Cyprus Mail by a lawyer as someone who lied about her (the lawyer’s) client’s status in order to disallow him and his family from staying on the island. Is it the same woman who two weeks ago didn’t hesitate to say that anyone who tried to help a Moldovan teenager desperately fight for a better future faced a fine of up to £10,000? And is this the same person who, on several occasions, has advised Cypriot women who have fallen in love with foreigners to go and live in their husbands’ countries, including Afghanistan?
Well, I’m sorry but these stories somehow don’t add up to decisions that are “soul-destroying”. Plus even if all the above was a misunderstanding, is the belief of saving us from becoming another “burning Paris” a politically correct approach to the subject expressed by the head of the Immigration Department?
Not that I would expect anything better from immigration officials around the world. I used to have a lot to do with them when I lived in England in the 1990s and if you think that they were better there you are 100 per cent mistaken. After all, being nasty to migrants is part of their job description. I remember on one occasion it took me and my then boyfriend a whole day at the Lunar House in Croydon (what a name for the Immigration Headquarters) to explain why it was OK for us to change the date of our wedding and therefore why they should not deport me (after all, people have a right to change their wedding date, don’t they?). Or the whole circus that happened after I got married. Believe me, when compared to that moive Green Card was nothing. Or the fact that even before, when I was a student at Durham, I wasn’t allowed to work…
The question “have I ever lied to the immigration services during various stages of my existence in ‘better off countries’” is pure rhetoric. In certain circumstances nobody is perfect. And this was all happening to somebody who was never actually planning to go through with “the real migration process”. I was just curious of the world. I wanted to learn and travel, and therefore I had no choice. I even married for the real reasons.
The truth about all these situations that become part of life for anybody trying to move out of a place that usually really is soul-destroying to somewhere with more basic existential freedom is that it’s always the same story. It is “them” (the immigration people whom we have to deceive one way or the other) and “us” (who want to do things that we are not allowed because we were born in the wrong country). Is it our fault that we are not British or American or German? No, it isn’t. Are we more stupid than them? I seriously doubt it. But we have no rights, no money, no permissions, and no possibilities, and thus the rules have to be broken. We have to learn how to “cheat them” and they have to learn how to “catch us”, no matter if we lie or not. This is the name of the whole game.
Shakalli says that 25,000 non-Cypriots currently present on the island are illegal, with many of them being false asylum seekers or entering sham marriages. It is completely possible that she is right in many cases. What makes her job different from others is that it is that a person she assesses is not innocent until proven guilty, but just the opposite. So let’s not talk here about soul-destroying. It is a job, and she is just doing it. Soullessly.
