Aussie tourist refused entry to the UK because of travel notes in diary

AN AUSTRALIAN tourist says she was sent packing from the United Kingdom after her diary was used as evidence against her.

Melbourne woman Jody Cleaver said she was deported from the UK because of assumptions made about the contents of her personal diary.

AN AUSTRALIAN woman on a European holiday says she was refused entry to the UK after a British immigration official misinterpreted a page from her personal diary as evidence she was actually seeking illegal work.

Melbourne artist Jody Cleaver, 31, was heading to the Yorkshire city of Leeds to stay with a friend for a month in the midst of her five-month travels through Europe, Fairfax reported.

She was carrying with her a diary of hand-scrawled notes about her travels, including a to-do list that included booking flights and researching museums.

She also wrote about plans to obtain a visa for the Schengen Area and noted Spain, Italy or France as possible options to find long-term work. Ms Cleaver said she wrote nothing in the diary about the UK, where she intended to stay with a friend for just a month before meeting her mother in Paris.

But upon arriving at London’s Stansted Airport, the Australian was interrogated and incarcerated overnight.

She was then sent packing from the UK after an immigration official said her diary contained evidence that she was, in fact, planning to live and work in the UK illegally.

“They thought I would want to work there ... They asked if I had printed CVs in my bag. Like it was 1992,” Ms Cleaver said on Facebook after she was sent back to Rome.

The traveller, who works as a freelance artist, admitted she didn’t have a return flight out of the UK, which made her “a touch too casual for the UK”.

“However they told me even with transport out I needed more incentive to return to Australia so even with it I would have been denied. (The immigration officer) said I would need a signed work contract with dates’ of leave specified.

“Also the English of the interviewer wasn’t 100 per cent ... So he was writing incorrect information down from the start. I told him our communication wasn’t clear and he became very angry.”

Ms Cleaver told Fairfax the notes in her diary were simply a to-do list.

“I wrote nothing about the UK,” she said. “Yet (the immigration official) alighted on that and said, ‘You wrote long term work, meaning you’re trying to work illegally here because you haven’t written the word permit in your notebook. That means you’re looking for work without a permit’.”

The official said Ms Cleaver’s lack of permanent employment in Australia was another reason for her deportation, even though she provided evidence of her work as a freelance artist.

He also said the painting course she did in Florence “may have had something to do with working in the UK”.

Jody Cleaver said she was held overnight at London’s Stansted Airport ‘without any of my things’.

According to Fairfax, in Ms Cleaver’s deportation notice, she was told: “You intend to stay with your friend ... in Leeds, and you intend to look after her dogs, help her redecorate her house in Leeds and sight-see in Leeds.

“I note you have been unable to state what you intend to see in Leeds ... I am satisfied that this does not represent the actions of a genuine visitor to the United Kingdom but rather a means to prolong your stay in the United Kingdom.”

Ms Cleaver was flown back to Rome over the weekend and described the experience as “very

Kafkaesque”.

“I did not plan to work in the UK, I just wanted to visit,” she said.

“The details of the whole process is what made it truly bizarre.”

Ms Cleaver was told she could not return to the UK for six months and would be questioned each time she attempted to re-enter the country.

A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman told Fairfax they had “no role in relation to the sovereign decisions of other countries in relation to visa and migration matters”.