A great-grandmother and Windrush campaigner who has terminal cancer has begged the Home Office to resolve her immigration status before she dies, but it has refused to expedite her case.
Eulalee Pennant, 64, of Jamaican heritage, arrived in the UK in 2001 and was granted a student visa. At one point, her immigration case was stuck in a Home Office backlog for a decade. She was granted discretionary leave to remain in 2019 on the basis of family life with her partner, Gilford Fraser, a British citizen and Windrush descendant, who arrived in the UK from Jamaica in 1968 at the age of 12.
Pennant’s leave to remain ran out in January this year. She has made a new application for further leave to remain but is still waiting for the Home Office to process it.
She was working as a carer during the pandemic and was a music performer with the stage name LadyP Lioness, but was diagnosed with stage 4 small round cell sarcoma in April and has been given just months to live by her doctors.
Pennant has no recourse to public funds, so she cannot access benefits that could make her final months more comfortable. So far she has not been charged for her NHS treatment, but she fears that Fraser may be saddled with a huge bill after her death. She has received emails from the hospital’s overseas visitors department asking for proof of her leave to remain in the UK.
The couple live in a third-floor flat in Hackney with no lift. Pennant is housebound apart from when an ambulance crew carry her down the stairs for hospital appointments.
Her MP, Diane Abbott, wrote to the Home Office asking them to expedite her application for further leave to remain, but officials wrote in response that while they were sorry about Pennant’s ill health, they would not expedite the application despite the limited time Pennant has left to live.
In the letter dated 6 August, officials said the type of application Pennant made does not have a target response time, and although these applications are considered as quickly as possible, “there may be circumstances which result in an extended delay in the application processing time”.
The letter added that because she was receiving NHS care, officials concluded “it is not appropriate to expedite the application with the reasoning provided”.
Family, friends and supporters have asked the Home Office to grant her access to public funds as well as asking the department to hurry up and process the application before Pennant dies.
Pennant has suffered many hardships and tragedies in her life, in Jamaica and the UK, including the murder of her son Michael Phillips in Jamaica in 2009. He died of multiple gunshot wounds in June 2009, months after being deported from the UK. In 2018, at the height of the Windrush scandal, the Home Office detained her and threatened to deport her to Jamaica. She has campaigned energetically for justice for Windrush victims.
Fraser said: “The things she has gone through are horrific. It is hard to even dream of the things she has experienced and the scars that she has been left with. When you see someone crying and you can’t do anything about it, it’s the worst thing.”
Pennant said: “If the Home Office would sort my case out, my life would be a million times better than it is now. They have messed with my life for so many years. Their treatment is cruel, it’s hostile, it’s racism. I have had a lot of struggle in my life. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this.”
Her supporters have set up a fund to pay for basics for her because she cannot access benefits.
Justice campaigner Karen Doyle, who is supporting Pennant, urged the Home Office to grant Pennant leave with recourse to public funds as a matter of urgency. “This simple act would take away the unbearable weight of worry about how she can financially survive, and lift the stress being caused by fears of being charged for medical care, how to pay bills, keep the home warm and survive the coming months.”
Home Office sources said they did not routinely comment on individual cases, that applications were considered on their own merits and that they endeavoured to consider them as quickly as possible.
