| 1 | 1 | | Arta, a shy, dark-haired 23-year-old, says she committed the first crime of her life |
| 2 | | within half an hour of arriving in Britain. She arrived at Heathrow from Albania in June |
| 3 | | 1990, the first time she had been abroad. In her bag was £95 and in her passport a six- |
| 4 | | month immigration stamp permitting her to work as an au pair for a Mrs. Collins in Dollis |
| 5 | | Hill, north London, but forbidding her to work anywhere else. 'I felt terrible,' she says. 'The |
| 6 | | system made me a liar before I had even collected my luggage, because I knew I would |
| 7 | | never go to Mrs. Collins.' Policemen terrified her. She was sure they knew she was an illegal |
| 8 | | immigrant. |
| 2 | 9 | | Over many months, Arta, who studied economics at university, learnt the harsh |
| 10 | | realities of the western world. She says she worked very hard for little reward by British |
| 11 | | standards and that she was treated unfairly by employers who knew she was an illegal |
| 12 | | worker. Tips were split between the manager and staff, leaving her little. |
| 3 | 13 | | What depressed her is that waiters, waitresses and shop assistants are treated 'like |
| 14 | | rubbish' in Britain. Employers and customers seldom realize that many economic migrants |
| 15 | | from eastern Europe are lawyers, architects, journalists and economists. 'Ask the next |
| 16 | | foreign waitress you meet what her qualification is. You might be surprised.' |
| 4 | 17 | | But why did she come to the UK? 'People always ask that. I love my country, but if |
| 18 | | you haven't lived there you'll never know how hard it is to live there. Getting a job is very, |
| 19 | | very difficult. Without a job you have to live at home and even if you are married, you |
| 20 | | often still have to live with your family, or his. Our money is worth very little in our |
| 21 | | country and nothing at all in the West. Even if it's hard here, at least there is freedom and |
| 22 | | excitement. Albania isn't what the tourists see.' |
| 5 | 23 | | But, as an illegal worker, does she abuse the system or does the system abuse her? |
| 24 | | 'Have you ever seen an east European begging or sleeping on the streets? We find work |
| 25 | | even if it's badly paid. We go into shops and restaurants and ask for work. We tell our |
| 26 | | friends when we're leaving a job so they can have it. |
| 6 | 27 | | I think we get the work because we work hard. We look smart and we can't afford to |
| 28 | | be ill. I was always surprised that people were begging in the streets. You can't see that in |
| 29 | | my country. Even when I had only three or four pounds in my pocket I never thought I |
| 30 | | would live on the streets - never! |
| 7 | 31 | | At the beginning I was always frightened the police would catch me, and I heard that |
| 32 | | the immigration authorities were searching in restaurants to find illegal workers. But |
| 33 | | nobody ever asked me what I was doing.' |
| 8 | 34 | | She has now returned to Albania. But it will not be difficult to go back to London. |
| 35 | | At the airport no one asked why she had over-stayed when she left England. |
