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Lily was taking her lunch break at the Dublin nursing home where she works when a friend called her to tell her that an apparently official letter had arrived for her.
She asked the friend to open it and read it aloud.
You are no longer allowed to stay in the state and you must now return voluntarily to your home country or be deported, ”the letter from the Irish Department for Justice and Equality reads. She tells him that she has five days to inform the authorities of her decision.
A flood of emotion rushed over her, through the layers of her protective gear. Lily said she wanted to cry, but held back the tears inside.
“I had to stay strong for the residents,” she says. “So I smiled but deep down it was incredibly painful.”
Lily – whose name has been changed for her safety – said she fled anti-LGBTQ persecution in her native Zimbabwe and came to Ireland in 2016.
She wanted to help others, so studied to qualify as a health assistant; she landed a job as a care worker in a nursing home last year and hopes to continue her nursing education in the future.
She worked in the nursing home throughout the coronavirus pandemic, taking just three weeks off when she contracted the virus herself in April.
Towards the start of the pandemic, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organization reported that Ireland had the highest rate of Covid-19 infection among healthcare workers in Europe.
Once she recovered, Lily returned to work. In the months that followed, she said she saw the disease taking the lives of some of the elderly people she had cared for.
“There were so many people dying. It was unbearable, ”she said.
Now, with deportation looming, Lily feels she is facing something akin to her own death sentence.
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