You were right. Our asylum claim has been denied, as has witholding of removal. We were thinking of appealing and sticking it out, but really this place is replete with people hanging on hoping for a miracle that's never going to happen, and we don't want to join them.

Our barrister told us when he visited to testify for us that this immigration judge, Rose Peters, has granted asylum to an IRA murderer who had killed two policemen, supposedly on political grounds, so that's the level of hypocrisy we're up against. Better we think to go back to England, face the music, and get it over with.

The ground for refusing asylum was that our prosecution in the UK did not constitute persecution (i.e. the government attorney and the IJ, both women, agree with it. The government attorney even argued against the First Amendment.) I believe that because this is a subjective assessment it is quite difficult to appeal against, and we could spend years taking it through various courts.