Observations on immigration

Monica Naylor is in her first year at secondary school and doing well. But the challenges facing this 12-year-old from Bedfordshire go beyond mastering French verbs and remembering her PE kit. Her mother Eunice has recently had to see the headmaster to plead for her daughter to be allowed free school meals. Fighting tooth and nail for such privileges has become a central part of the family's life.

While Monica is a British citizen, her mother is threatened with deportation and unable to work. Mother and daughter exist in a state of limbo. They came to the UK in 2003. Monica's mother had married a British serviceman in Kenya, but six months after the family moved to Britain he died unexpectedly of cancer.

Monica was automatically granted citizenship, but her mother was not and applied for indefinite leave to remain. Four years on, the Home Office has still not decided whether she can stay. Trapped in the bureaucracy of Britain's immigration system, she has been unable to work legally or claim benefits for all this time.

She has been offered jobs, but is scared that taking them would prejudice her chances of being allowed to stay, so the family rely on the generosity of friends and a local church to provide clothes, food and transport to school for Monica. Eunice hates not being able to provide for her daughter. "I need to work - I don't care what kind of work. I just want to live a normal day-to-day life," she said.

Julian Bild, a lawyer working for the Immigration Advisory Service, says the twilight world Eunice finds herself in is well populated. The system is overburdened and "anything but the simplest cases get shelved for years and years".

Nadine Dorries, the family's MP, has raised their plight with the government, but had little success. She said: "They should be viewing this case with compassion because there's a little girl involved."

The complicated legal status of Monica makes it hard for her to get the support to which she is entitled as a British citizen. Free uniforms and school meals have been won only after months of bureaucracy. Dorries says: "Every week we are battling to get even basic services for Eunice and her daughter." In December 2006, the MP received a brisk letter from immigration minister Liam Byrne, stating that Eunice and Monica's situation did not provide a "sufficiently compelling" reason to accelerate the decision. He confirmed that "Mrs Naylor is not entitled to take any employment at this time".

A year later, a letter from Lin Homer, chief executive at the Border and Immigration Agency, offered an explanation for the delay that has forced the Naylor family to live in poverty: "I apologise for the delay in dealing with Mrs Naylor's application. Her case file is currently held in another location and has been requested."

A direct appeal from Dorries to Gordon Brown prompted an assurance that the case was being "actively reviewed".

Things may start to move. But until the case file arrives at the correct address, Eunice and Monica must wait in needless poverty.

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