When the pandemic hit the UK last March, Natasha* was working in the kitchen for a hospital in Sheffield. For the next ten months she would cook for doctors and nurses, Covid-19 patients and visitors. She was worried about falling sick. If she became ill, there would be no one to look after her 11-year-old daughter. But that was only the start of her worries.
As a migrant, Natasha, 44, must pay thousands of pounds in visa fees so she can go to work. Since moving to the UK from Trinidad and Tobago in 2006, she has worked on and off for the NHS. Already on a low salary and supporting her daughter, she has scraped by for years, barely able to pay the fees that allow her to earn money in the UK. The paradox of this is not lost on her.
“They think we are replaceable, they don’t care if we can’t pay the fees because they can just get someone else.”
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When at 8pm the country was clapping I was angry. I thought, you are clapping for me?
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