CASE STUDY 2:ATHULA (not her real name) came to Dublin from Sri Lanka eight years ago. "I came because my country at that time was very bad. We had a bad war there for several years and the situation was very bad for me and my family."
She found work in a restaurant. “At that time I didn’t have any experience but said: ‘Okay, you gain restaurant experience, you work for us and we will [get] you a work permit’.”
She worked as a waitress and cleaner, receiving €35 per day regardless of the length of her working day. “I kept on asking them when will I get my work permit and he’d say ‘wait, wait’ . . . Now I understand that, at that time, they could easily [have obtained] a work permit for me.”
Having been joined by her husband and daughter, and later her son, Athula came to think of Ireland as home. However, her illegal status meant she could not return to Sri Lanka, even when her mother became terminally ill with cancer. “She was looking for me . . . My brother would tell me she is holding her breath until I can come to see her. That was the hardest time in my life.”
Working in another of her boss’s restaurants, Athula would open and close up, working 12-hour days, six days a week for €60 a day. “I had no fun, no going to the cinema. I had nothing in my life. It was only work and coming home and lie down and in the morning start work again.”
One day she showed up to find her boss had shut the restaurant and the owner had left owing her three weeks’ pay. Although she got a new job, the same thing happened again, leaving her owed more than €1,000. But she felt powerless to do anything about it as she could not approach the Garda.
“I know how people treat people who don’t have a visa . . . The people who are here are very helpless. undocumented are working like dogs sometimes. People take advantage of them.”