Vigil for Visas: what happened? 

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Written on Saturday, 30 April 2022 by Kitty Hamilton

It’s a week since our first Vigil for Visas. Nine days ago we would never have imagined what a week it would be. Here Kitty Hamilton reflects on what’s happened. 

This is a friends-of-friends and strangers movement. It’s had to be right from the start. When Priti Patel and Michael Gove launched the Homes for Ukraine scheme on the 18^th March, the echoes of the second world war were hard to miss. “The UK’s long and proud history of helping others in their hour of need’ and promising that the scheme would ‘offer a lifeline to those who’d been forced to flee’.  

On the face of it the scheme seems generous. Those providing housing for six months will receive a £350 a month “thank you” payment, councils will receive just over £10,000 per person, with additional funding for schools. Ukrainians can look for work straight away. It’s a package sensible enough to avoid putting too much pressure on communities.  

So, along with two hundred thousand others, we committed ourselves to welcoming strangers in “their hour of need” into our home. No small ask. We were prepared to do “our bit”. It didn’t take long to establish that doing “our bit” actually meant “do-it-yourself”. The Home Office was not going to match up would-be hosts with refugees. That was our job. Many resorted to Facebook and sites like Sunflower Sisters, not all are as trustworthy. But in our case, we have a street google group, and a former neighbour with whom I’d had tea once, sent an email asking if any of us were interested in hosting a Ukrainian family.  

We had registered our “interest” almost as soon as the scheme was open.

So, when Katherine Klinger, this neighbour-but-near-stranger, offered to put us in touch with a family we’d never met before, we said yes. We began the application process that day. I stayed up till 2am and woke at 6am to complete the process. It was urgent. It still is. 

Then we waited. On a hunch this wasn’t going to be easy, I got in touch with my MP Catherine West, two days after the applications were submitted. She emailed me back within hours to say she was going to raise the issue with the Home Office. For the next few weeks, we were in regular contact, each time with no news. Her application was always on behalf of the family, not three individuals. Then on Thursday 20^th April, we got an email from her telling us the mother’s visa had been approved but the children remained “under consideration”. One of the children is five years old.

This happened on the same day my husband sent me an LBC article about a Ukraine Helpline whistle blower suggesting the situation with visas was more than a coincidence. I rang Katherine. She’s had similar experiences but in her case one person had received a duplicate visa when others had none at all. I said we had to do something. She rang a Ukrainian friend of hers, and another, Rosemary Ellis, who’d organised demonstrations before and by Thursday evening we’d designed a logo with a strap line and called in favours. We informed some journalists, got permission from the police, and were prepared to go live with a Vigil for Visas that Saturday.  

Almost as soon as our logo went live on Facebook, Rebecca Lewis, who founded the Marlow Ukraine Collective got in touch. She’d pulled in a favour from a lawyer friend who’d quickly unlocked the “problem” with her visa applications. It took just nine hours. She realised not everyone could call on lawyer friends which is why she set up the Marlow Ukraine Collective.  

She called us, total strangers, because she liked our Five Demands and our logo designed by a Ukrainian volunteer, whom I’d never met before. Rebecca wanted to know if she could use them. Our immediate response to this stranger was of course!  

The Marlow Ukraine Collective was way ahead of us. Louise Marcinkevice, who lives in Cleethorpes, had met Rebecca through the “Taking action over the Homes for Ukraine visa delays” Facebook group. They decided to compile information about visa issues. Within days it was in the hundreds. By the time we were in contact with them it was close to a thousand (editor: by the time of this article’s publication – it’s 2K).  

We held our vigil on Saturday not knowing if anyone would turn up, they did. We’d never met any of them before. The media showed up too.

The Vigil had triggered people across the country to start joining up the dots. These weren’t one-off cases, there was a pattern. Versions on a theme of X visas granted, one held back. 

The Marlow Ukraine Collective’s demonstration was on Monday.  They were due to meet Theresa May, architect of the government’s Hostile Environment policy, and Steve Baker at the Houses of Parliament. Katherine, whom they’d never met was invited too. The MPs made various excuses. High on the list was people trafficking. Of course, that is a serious risk, but letting people sit in basements with shells landing around them is a pretty big risk too. As is granting mothers visas but not their children. Or, come to think of it, initiating a scheme that forces people to search on-line for each other.  

Since then, at least one of us has stood sentinel outside the Home Office. It’s been cold. We’re not there in large numbers. The support is on-line as the number of people telling us their stressful story grows.

Standing there, outside the Home Office, workers have been apologetic and, in some cases, quite openly critical of their employer.  

We’re still there, but we will scale back to Wednesdays and Saturdays. This is so we can focus on our next steps.

We’ve started to prepare for a judicial review, we’re in touch with high profile lawyers who are willing to take the case on and a crowdfunding page should be live early next week.  

It will be interesting to watch the legal case unfold, but the moral case is something else altogether. Two hundred thousand of us made a promise. We want to honour that promise and quickly. Many are losing heart. Some refugees are choosing to stay where they are or even go back. Who knows if the government launched this scheme knowing that this might be the case. On Thursday morning I posted a heart-breaking story on Sunflower Sisters. I write it here in full: 

“So, my guest Irina, and her daughter received their visas at the end of last week. They live in Odessa. Irina was packing to leave Ukraine for Moldova, to come to the UK. Then I heard nothing, not over the weekend or this week. Tonight, I have had a message from her friend Olga, saying Irina was in the block of flats that was hit by the missile, and she is in hospital, her condition serious, I am at a loss…” 

The Vigil will continue. 

Tell Patel – Delay is Deadly – We Need Visas – Now! 

https://vigil4visas.co.uk/