Standing by the bar within the confines of a reputable hotel in central
London, I was trying hard to hide my frustration. I’d been waiting 25
minutes for a contact, who’d promised to introduce me to a number of
‘unregistered citizens’ wishing to share their experiences as part of
the unappreciated working class.

Call them what you like, illegal aliens, illegal immigrants, unlawful
nationals, the names or titles may vary, but the overall perception as
recently highlighted by Tory leader Michael Howard, remains the same.
They’re considered to be a bunch of dirty, thieving bastards whose sole
contribution is to deny legitimate locals – jobs, shelter and whatever
limited supply of clean air remains from London’s rapidly regressive
atmosphere.

Legislation passed over the summer has also made it difficult, but not
impossible for such groups of individuals seeking a better standard of
living. Persons willing to risk all in a bid to make it to their vision
of Utopia, which in this case happens to be London. With the odds quite
clearly stacked against them and the risk of deportation hanging over
their heads, a life in the shadows appears to be the only alternative,
or is it? I hoped my patience (decreasing by the second) would pay off
and I would be presented with the opportunity to have some of these
questions answered. I wished so much for that to happen.
 
Well, I wish I could say my contact turned up from a side door behind
the bar, eyeing me up questioningly while quizzing me to make sure I
had arrived on my own. I wish I could say he led me down a flight of
stairs to a lower level bar, where I met an Eastern European man, pale
skinned with an imposing physique marked with a nasty looking scar
running down the side of his neck. A man who insisted on searching my
pockets to ensure I had no electronic device to record the evening’s
proceedings before telling me of how he paid large sums of money to
have a Bulgarian passport obtained for him (restrictions from people
coming from that part of the world are fairly lax), but recounted the
story of someone he knew who got himself into the UK by riding
underneath the Eurostar train. How he laughed at my pre-conceived
notions of him being alienated from society, peerless, penniless and
homeless. He had friends, had a job and had a roof over his head. I
wish I could say his face got extremely animated as he pointed out to
me how most nationalities brought into the country where kept together
as a way of creating a general feeling of togetherness, thus enforcing
a siege mentality, that sought to toughen them up for the tribulations
most of them would invariably face. I wish I could also tell you that
he got the final round of drinks before making a hasty departure.

See I wish I could tell you all these things, but I can’t because
persons like my Balkan friend don’t exist, meaning there’s no way any
of that could have happened now, is there?

What I can say, is that without the unregistered, life as we know it
would be a lot more different and I for one am grateful to the people
who clean our toilets, make our beds, take care of our children, wait
on us, bend over to be fucked by us all so they can get that little bit
closer to the lives they envisioned for themselves.