Backstory: A child's refuge in a migration maze

Talya has a thin face, with shadows. I know she's 11, but so tiny, she could be 8. I wonder about her nutrition. She wonders about her spelling. Clutching her donated notebook,she superseriously writes "doo" and looks up pleadingly. I grin, sheepish, shake my head. She's warmly dressed against the cold. There are plastic clips in her hair – green, yellow, and pink. Someone loves this child, cherishes her, sends her willingly to this twice-weekly school.

Twice-weekly school. It's all this child and the 30 other immigrant students at the Christ Church refugee school get. They're from Africa, Iran, Iraq, and their families are illegal immigrants.

I volunteered as an English teacher here last year for two months in classes held in the nave of Christ Church, beneath swooping archways. Students play, learn, and eat rolls and apple slices for breakfast.

Talya's mother wants to go to America or Canada or Australia. The family has been here now eight years, says her mother. That's eight years without a legal income, without schooling, without healthcare.

Political, diplomatic, and economic forces conspire against immigrant children like Talya. Thousands of them are here with their families, seeking asylum for all kinds of reasons. The children are caught in a game they may never comprehend – their families share an illegal status that may or may not turn into the temporary legal respite of asylum and designation as refugees. But whether their families ever find a new country to accept them is never assured.

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Strategically vital to the international community, Turkey has a bright future: a surging economy, a rising standard of living and a progressive if conservative government. Still it has its problems – the wide gap between rich and poor, inept and corrupt bureaucratic structures, weak social welfare systems, and widespread difficulties for women.

And now, the European Union is exerting complex and contradictory pressures on Turkey as requisites to EU entry. On the one hand, Europe is pressing Turkey to improve its human rights record and act humanely to asylum seekers. On the other hand, it insists that Turkey prevent the illegal flow of refugees into Europe.

To compound the problem for Turkey, over the past five years, Europe and other Western countries have developed a "fortress mentality" inhospitable to refugees. UN data show that the number of refugees accepted in EU countries has declined dramatically – almost 50 percent – over the past five years.

Meanwhile, thousands desperate enough to risk their lives come by leaky ship across the Mediterranean, or overland from Syria, Lebanon, or other countries to the east; or they simply fly in and overstay their three-month tourist visa. They come from all walks of life – doctors, bakers, shopkeepers, lawyers. Desperation is the common denominator.

No official tally exists but governments estimate that, extrapolating the number of illegal aliens arrested, there are between 500,000 to 1 million refugees in Turkey. That's no small problem.

On arrival, they register with the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) as asylum seekers, and the wait begins. Most don't know it, but the process may take four to five years. Life is precarious. The families aren't eligible for health services, work permits, or public education. Finally, if they're given refugee status they wait for a country to accept them – which may never happen.

If, at the first stage, refugee status is refused, the Turkish authorities give 15 days notice to leave the country. Then, according to refugee workers, if the immigrants have money they can pay a smuggler thousands of dollars to enter Europe illegally. If not, they go "underground," disappearing from the radar screens of authorities – officially ceasing to exist.

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