Migrant Tales got a phone call Thursday from an Iraqi woman* who spoke a few words of English. “Do you speak German?” she asked.
An Arabic-speaker called later the forty-year-old woman, who is one of the thousands of unlucky asylum seekers facing deportation after Finland decided to tighten its immigration policy.
The woman’s woes do not only hinge on deportation but to the fact that she is a single mother of two: her son is seven and her daughter, who suffers from mental problems and requires psychiatric help, is eight years old.
Considering the harsh lives that these asylum seekers have endured in their home countries, their misery doesn’t end in Europe but is exacerbated in some cases.
The woman, who claims to be suffering from cancer, is feeling desperate for her children and for herself.
Some pictures of when her children on the left are sleeping at the railway station, where they were picked up by the police and taken to a hospital. The Italian police collected money between themselves to buy refugees food, according to her. The single mother has lost contact with her husband.
If there is a silver lining in this family’s story, it’s that they won’t be deported back to Iraq but to Italy.
