Madelline (24) left her home in Durban in South Africa five years ago to work as a butcher in the north-east of Ireland.
"It was a great opportunity. You could earn as much in a week here as you could in a month in South Africa. I thought I'd have a great future here."
In the past six months, however, she has found her employer had brought her here illegally. Last week she was given one day's notice.
The mother of three-year-old Annie has been told she will not be entitled to any welfare payment. She has been advised the €130 a month child benefit payment is to be stopped. "Yes, I am very worried. This is Annie's home now and I have worked very hard to give her the things she wants."
She was working in a medical centre when she heard about the "great opportunity" to work in Ireland. She submitted her CV and after two interviews, including one with the Irish owners of the factory, she was told she was one of the successful candidates. It was October 1999 when she and five other "successful candidates" met at Durban airport to travel with an "agent" to Dublin.
She said that they did not speak to anyone in Customs in Dublin, had been been told to say, if asked, that they were trainee butchers and that they worked for a meat firm in Durban.
Others who arrived on different flights were told to say they were trainees with a meat plant. "We were told it was a student visa. It meant nothing to us, we were not questioned by Customs and came through," says Madelline.
A waiting bus took them on the two-hour journey to the factory and she began work the next day in the boning and packing section.
Accommodation was provided - she shared a two-bedroom house with five others -- and she worked 12-hour days from 6 a.m.
She "didn't mind" the work and considered the £130 a week salary excellent. There were about 60 South Africans working there and in 2001 Brazilians started working there too.
Throughout her time there she says she was asked to hand in her passport periodically to be stamped by immigration gardaí in the county.
About July 2003, she says, when her last stamp expired, she and her colleagues were called in to sign a form which, she says, "was supposed to be an application for a permit". However, to apply for a work permit for someone already in the State that person must be legally here, which Madelline and her colleagues were not. However, she continued working as normal and asked regularly if there was any news on her permit.
In January she was told her application had been rejected,although she continued working there. It was in July, she said, when the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) began an investigation into the status of a number of Brazilians working at the factory, that she "knew" she was in trouble.
"Straight after that trouble I was told I was working for another contractor." Although she continued working at the factory, she was taken off its payroll. Since then she was officially "employed" by another factory in a neighbouring county. Her payslips, once computer-generated, were hand-written since July.
Last Tuesday she was called to meet the manager of her new "employer".
"He said, 'This is going to be your last day'. I just sat there and listened. The reason he said was immigration was on their back 24/7. I wanted to grab something and hit him. 'What about my Annie?' I kept thinking."
