Enticed to the UK with promises that never materialise, many women face exploitative or abusive employers — and a government that just wants to deport them. Y ou see them sometimes in the kitchens and nurseries of wealthy people — women, mostly Filipino, rarely introduced by name. They come to the UK with a promise of income and regular hours, working as housekeepers or nannies to send money back home to their own families; but for many of them the reality is shockingly different. There are nearly 19, people on overseas domestic visas in the UK, according to a Freedom of Information request from the Home Office seen by the Guardian; and together they make up, like the Windrush generation, a population of migrants under threat.
This means that if their employer is exploitative or abusive, their main means of escape — moving to another employer — is closed to them. Mel, a year-old domestic worker from the Philippines, describes being brought to London in by a Saudi family. She worked most days from 6am until at least 1am and slept in the laundry room. After four years, she managed to escape with the help of a Filipino friend who was a member of the Voice of Domestic Workers VODW , a grassroots self-help group.
Since then she has been undocumented, working as a volunteer for VODW, which supports her. She opened it to find four immigration officers. They arrested her and spirited her away in a white van to Becket House, an immigration reporting centre near Tower Bridge in London, where she was photographed, fingerprinted and invited to return voluntarily to the Philippines.
Just going back home is not an option for Mel and the women like her: her earnings would be so meagre that there is no way that she could support her children. Like her fellow domestic workers, she sent most of her earnings back home. She worked seven days a week — no days off or holidays.
What if she got sick? A cleaner from a neighbouring house, hearing her sobbing, put a ladder up against the back balcony, enabling her to escape with her possessions in a black sack.
