Staff bid to save deportation threat student
LECTURERS are fighting to save a "first class student" from deportation back to the country she fled from as a child.
City and Islington College lecturer Alec Turner is offering £1,000 of his own cash, which a colleague is matching, to get student Lilian Kikulel bailed from a detention centre for asylum seekers where she is currently being held.
The "gifted" Ugandan arrived in the UK in 2002 aged 16 and gained five GCSE qualification equivalents at City and Islington College in Hornsey Road, Holloway. She has just achieved the equivalent of two A-levels in health and social care and been offered a place on a nursing degree course at Middlesex University.
Mr Turner, who taught Lilian for three years, has spent the past year fighting to keep her in the UK. Lilian, now 19, was impounded at Yarwood and was due to be deported but a solicitor has succeeded in getting her a judicial review which may take several weeks.
Mr Turner said: "I would do anything to help Lilian. She's a first-class student and it just seems bizarre that the British Government would want to deport a first-class student.
"She is on the threshold of starting a degree. They should at least give her three years to do her degree.
"Africa is crying out for nurses and the NHS here is doing a lot of poaching of African healthcare professionals, yet she could be stopped from getting a degree which could be of enormous benefit."
Mr Turner is applying for bail for Lilian, who lived alone in a flat in Shoreditch, to be put up at his home which he reckons will increase the chances of success.
Mr Turner said: "When I first visited Lilian at Yarwood she was bewildered but last time her solicitor had buoyed her up and she was in great spirits. We were expecting we would have to go to Heathrow to see what we could do. We have a lot of asylum issues with students at the college but this is the first time I've done this. We will fight this all the way."
The Home Office declined to comment.
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