The case of the Singaporean transgender woman

Some of you have asked me for a response to the story of the transgender Singaporean woman who was refused asylum in the UK. So this woman has been living in the UK since 2004 on a student visa till 2012 as a student. Then in 2012 when her student visa expired, she applied for asylum to remain in the UK because she didn't want to return to Singapore. There has been a piece circulating in social media criticizing the ST in the way they had referred to the woman as a 'he' rather than a 'she' and they way they used the term 'cross-dresser' rather than transgender. I'm not here to debate that today but to try to offer a fresh perspective on the issue but rather to talk about immigration in general for someone in her position, having talked about options for immigration in a recent article.

Now firstly, whilst this may seem incredible harsh on my part, I actually think that this woman made a fundamental error in judgement in trying to go down this route. We have very little information about this woman - we don't know her name, we don't know what she was studying for 8 long years in the UK, we don't know anything about her personal circumstances. But having spent 8 long years in the UK as a student and then having a further 2 years to appeal the rejection of her initial application for asylum, we do know that this woman spent a total of 10 years in the UK: that's an awfully long time to hedge your bets on one option without even considering a plan B. That is unwise.

Why oh why was this woman barking up the wrong tree?

Has the UK government granted asylum to LGBT refugees before? Yes they have. But take a look at this case for example: a gay Ugandan asylum seeker Robert Segwanyi arrived in the UK because he was fleeing homophobic attacks in Uganda. Now Uganda is one of the most homophobic countries in the world and gays are forced to keep a very low profile in Uganda. Despite having appealed time and again against the decision to deport him, Segwanyi returned to Uganda after his final appeal was rejected and according to his Facebook profile (why the privacy settings on his Facebook profile is so low, I have no idea), he s back in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, today. His case was fairly high profile, yet it still failed in the end despite some media attention. Nonetheless, in another report by the BBC, the UK government has indeed granted asylum to two gay asylum seekers from Cameroon and Iran. So yes, there is a precedent but you should also be aware of the amount of scrutiny such cases are subjected to and how many cases are rejected: this makes the chances of success actually painfully low despite some of them receiving death threats in the country of their origin. Thus this given how difficult this route is, it would not be an obvious choice.

In my previous article, I identified 8 possible ways for someone to gain residency in the UK and they are:

1. Come as a skilled migrant (a Tier 2 visa) 
2. Marry a UK citizen
3. Marry an EU citizen
4. Find £2 million and apply for a Tier 1 investor visa
5. Find £50,000 and apply for a Tier 1 entrepreneur visa to start a business
6. Get an intra-company transfer work permit
7. Claim UK/European ancestry (only possible for those who genuinely can) 
8. Apply for asylum 

There are many options for a UK residency visa.

Now it is impossible to say which one of these would be the easiest options - it would depend on your circumstances. If you have access to large sums of money, then option 4 would be so incredibly easy but most people simply don't have access to that kind of wealth. Likewise, if you have the capital and a credible business plan, then option 5 sounds like a great idea - but if you neither have the capital nor the business acumen, then it is just not an option open to you. Options 2 and 3 may seem incredibly easy and straight forward if you already have found someone who loves you and willing to marry you, but if you have yet to find love, that option is simply not on the table for you. Option 7 is incredibly easy for those who genuinely have UK or European ancestry, but for most of us, we simply don't have a grandparent who are born in an EU country. Option 6 is only open to people who are currently working for a company with a strong enough presence in a UK to justify a work permit to bring you into the UK. 

So having eliminated options 2 to 7, that leaves us with only options 1 and 8. The Singaporean woman in question chose option 8 and failed - that means that she would be deported from the UK and made to return to Singapore after her final appeal has been rejected. That is a very poor result for her and I can't believe why she didn't try to hedge her bets by trying to qualify as a skilled migrant in the mean time - after all, she was in the UK for a total of 10 years, that is more than enough time to become qualified in any skill or trade. Heck, you can become qualified as a doctor in 10 years. It takes you 2 to 4 years to qualify as a nurse and 4 years to qualify as a teacher (3 year degree programme + 1 year PGCE). As a qualified nurse or teacher, this Singaporean woman could have easily procured a tier 2 skilled migrant visa and working in the UK right now. Heck in her ten years, she could have qualified as a nurse and a teacher and still had time to do a masters degree. She had ten years to come up with a very good plan - but she didn't. 

She spent 8 years studying and is still not skilled enough to get a work permit?

What on earth she has spent 8 years studying, I don't know - but I hope that she is at least highly qualified in one area that can find her paid work. But the fact that she wasn't even in a position to apply for a highly skilled migrant visa even after 8 years of further education suggests that her studies were in such a niche area that wasn't of much value in the UK job market. Perhaps she had dreams of pursuing her interests in that particular niche area, but that's when I have to be very pragmatic and say, "either you pursue that back in Singapore or another country willing to give you a visa, or you have to work towards qualifying as a skilled migrant in the UK. Applying for asylum simply isn't going to work in your case. I'm sorry, but that is simply the truth of the matter given the circumstances." She spent 8 years as a student in the UK - that means she is a person with considerable wealth because it is not cheap to spend 8 years in further education in the UK! She had a total of 10 years to walk through the door marked "skilled migrant visa" - but no, she insisted on playing Catwoman and spent years trying to climb through the ventilation shaft despite having virtually no chance of getting through that tiny little window. I say, it was such a gross error of judgement on her part. 

Am I being heartless and cruel? Maybe. Probably. But I have worked a long time in sales and I have a very pragmatic view of the world, shaped by the experience of trying to make a sale. When I meet a new sales prospect, I put him/her into the various categories: 

A) Yes, s/he will buy something from me, I am 100% sure of it. 

B) Perhaps s/he will buy something from me, I am confident but not certain. 

C) I doubt s/he will buy something from me, but you never know. I am not ruling it out. 

D) It is highly unlikely that s/he will ever spend any money with me. Next! 

My experience in sales has shaped my view of the world.

The amount of time and effort I would spend on a sales prospect would depend entirely on what category they fall into. I would pursue a category A client relentlessly and effectively give up on a category D client. You can see that in the world of retail - there is a menswear shop on Oxford Street where I am sure the sales staff are on commission. They have some quirky clothes in there but gosh, it is all very expensive. Sometimes when I walk in there, I am completely left alone in peace to browse because they are convinced I will not spend any money. But on my last trip there, this salesman picked up that I really liked a dark blue jacket and clung on to me - to the point of being quite pushy. Clearly, he had placed me in category A and was determined to get a sale out of me. By that token, I view all options in life in the same way: I evaluate what my chances of success are before pursuing anything. 

In the case of this Singaporean transgender woman, if she had come to me and asked me, "what are the chances of my case, do you think I would succeed? Should I go ahead and apply for asylum here?" If I was to be super optimistic, I would place it in category C, but to be totally honest, I would place it in category D without a moment's hesitation. Based on the other cases which had been rejected by the Home Office when it came to LGBT asylum seekers, she had absolutely no chance of getting her case approved. No way. And that's not me passing judgement on her personal circumstances, I am just evaluating the system for what it is and what her chances are. I would then tell her to instead pursue a skilled migrant visa instead - a route that she would have offered her a much higher chance of success. 

Limpeh would pick the best route for success.

Perhaps that's me having a very down to earth, pragmatic view of the situation. I was just talking to a Polish friend of mine today and I met him when I was doing a play some time back. Let's call him Jan (not his real name). Now Jan told me that he was going to be start rehearsals for a play in February and as I found out more about the play, I realized wait a minute, it was not paid work. They are barely covering his expenses (if that at all) with a very small payment and he is expected to put in about 35 to 40 hours a week during rehearsals and then perform 6 shows a week. And I'm like, whaaaaat? Jan? Why the hell are you doing this? Leave this kind of crappy work for new comers who are desperate for experience or amateurs who are happy to do this for fun - you're a professional actor, I know how good you are: why are you selling yourself short like that? And more to the point, who's going to pay your bills when you work for nothing in this period? 

Jan said, "It's not like I don't want to do paid work, it's not easy - you know, I go for all these auditions all the time but I do not get the lead roles in those plays. Maybe it's because I am Polish, maybe I truly suck as an actor - but either way, the only way I can get acting work is if I do these low-paid/amateur productions and if I want to be an actor, then that's what I have to do for now." Okay, I can see his point of view, but if it had been me, I would look at the situation and say, "either I get proper paid work as an actor or I will go do something else with my life. I am not going to give away my time, energy and talent for free because I know I can deserve better." Clearly, I wasn't going to change Jan's mind on the issue, so I backed off to avoid an argument. What was the point? I didn't want to upset my friend. 

Jan is a Polish actor in London.

So as you can see, Jan and I are very different people. Perhaps some of you will express admiration for Jan, in sticking to his guns and pursuing his dreams. Perhaps some of you may dismiss him as a dreamer who is wasting his time and energy, working for nothing when he could be pursuing something else. But there you go, there are people like Jan who stubborn pursue something and insist on doing things their way - perhaps this Singaporean transgender woman is just like Jan, maybe there have been her friends who did try to discourage her from going down this route but I suspect that she would have ignored their advice, the same way Jan was not prepared to listen to me. Some people are simply irrational - in Jan's case, well, I can just stand back and say, "listen darling, you know how I feel. I'm your friend, you can do what you want, I am always here for you as a pal and I won't pass judgement but don't expect me to tell you that you're doing the right thing when you know what I think." 

At least the worst case scenario for Jan is that he ends up pretty darn broke after this next theatre stint - for the Singaporean transgender woman, she is now back in Singapore having wasted so much time and money pursuing an option which totally did not give her the result she wanted. What can I say? Someone gave her very bad advice and she was silly enough not to have pursued the skilled migrant option. Ten years and what a poor result? Good grief. Unreal. That's it from me on this issue - please feel free to leave me your comments below. Many thanks for reading.