immigration is a dirty word

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We require all applicants for a spousal visa to prove the legitimacy of their relationship. A number of preliminary questions pertaining to your relationship to your partner (hereafter referred to as your sponsor) follow below. Please answer these questions as fully as possible in support of this initial application.

1) Please give your full name and the name of your sponsor. 

He calls me Lola, sometimes Lo.

When we met I had scarlet lips and was wearing one sock.

I call him Solomon because he has eyes like a king

and when his fingers touch me 

I turn to gold.

2) If you live with your sponsor please provide your address and briefly describe the nature of your domicile.

A fifth floor flat in Bournemouth; a fairytale tower.

The front door key jams in the lock

and the grey stairwell reeks sickly-sour

but light filters through gauzy curtains. There is hope here. 

3) Have you lived with your sponsor outside of the UK?

Yes, everywhere, although only in our minds. 

We have travelled the whole world through.

We have seen galaxies pass through our fingertips. 

It has been such a beautiful journey. 

4) How and when did you enter the UK?

Pressed close to a woman whose name 

I didn’t know in the belly of a French van 

paid for with dirty five euro notes. Many of them. 

5) Do you have employment in the UK? Please provide details of the nature of your work and your employer.

We are dignified people; we have pride. 

He has a broad back and my hands are willing.  

But it is hard when people’s faces are closed.

6) Please provide details of any financial dependants.

We left his mother behind. She will never forgive us. 

Now Solomon begs me for a child.

’A little one, Lo, please,’ he says.

But I see the nest that swallows have built in our eaves 

and their gaping beaks break my heart. 

7) Where and when did you marry?

At home. On a hot April day that opened like a blind. 

8) What language do you speak with your sponsor?

An ancient one. 

Older than Egyptian or Hebrew or Persian or Greek.

It contains no words;

It comes from the guts.

9) Are you attaching any documentation in support of your application? If so, please give details.

Yes.

Here is a bus ticket from London to Birmingham.

Here is a metal bottle cap with a punched hole

and a black cord threaded through it. 

Here is a picture of a red Georgian door torn

from a magazine and kept flat and smooth

between the pages of a book. 

Applications may take up to 14 days to process - please do not contact the Department before this time has elapsed. 

We will contact you with a date for your (separate) Home Office interviews as soon as possible.

***

All of this anti-immigration sentiment is becoming a little wearing. Because that's essentially what so much of this anti-Europe guff is about: being anti-immigration. And anti-immigration is only a hair's breadth away from being a leeeeetle bit racist.  

Economic downturn...let's find someone to blame...hang on, we're working on it...aha, and behold the designated scapegoats. Yup, we've got them here. Ready? Numero uno: EUROPE  and its multi-faceted-far-too-complicated-to-try-to-actually-understand-so-let's just-make-up-our own-reality-functionings. Aaaaaaand drumroll please...dirty (usually Eastern) Europeans! They'll be after your jobs! They'll want to speak their own crackers languages in your train carriage! They'll bring their dark skin and even darker eyes and their fathomless customs and we don't want any of it, thank you very much.  

***

My Aunty Peg arrived in America on the 5th May 1930. She was her 'fighting weight' (10 stone 3), was a celebrated beauty and, by God, she wanted an adventure. I'm pretty sure when she watched the sun set behind Manhattan's boom-era skyscrapers that evening she felt like she'd hit the big time. 

My Aunty Bridie arrived in London in 1935. She was 14 years old and completely on her own, with a few English notes tucked into her sock. She worked as a housemaid in a big house, then found her way into pubs in the 50s and 60s. There were three guesthouses with NO DOGS NO BLACKS NO IRISH signs gracing the windows in her street alone. 

But before all of that she met a Greek man - my lovely Uncle Nicky, who taught me how to shell pistachios and the Greek words for 'sunshine' and 'starlight' - and brought him back to Ireland to show him off. Her mother, was so startled at her daughter's beau's black hair and strange accent that she told her friends Bridie had met "a black man". But arra it was grand, because he was a lovely fella, and one of those Greek Orthodox ones - which is practically the same as being a Catholic, you know. 

***

And all of that reminds me of this poem, which I love very dearly, but mostly for its final stanza about "Albion too was once/a colony like ours"  and the lines:

"All in compassion ends 

So differently from what the heart arranged..."

We were all the oppressor once, I suppose; and, similarly, many of us were once the immigrant. Some people would do well to remember that.