我们的经济需要真相。英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）也需要真相。
Our economy needs it. The NHS needs it. And making foreign workers’ lives more miserable – as the home secretary plans to do – will undermine integration My mum’s carer was uncharacteristically late one morning.
而内政大臣计划让外国工人的生活更加艰难，这只会破坏社会的融合。有一天早上，我妈妈的护工比平时晚到了。
起初她不愿说明原因，后来才知道她发现之前的照顾对象——一位独自生活的老妇人，没有家人探望——已经倒在地上，几乎奄奄一息。
She didn’t want to say why at first, but it turned out she’d found her previous client – an elderly lady living all alone, with no family to visit – collapsed on the floor, barely alive.
对于一个只有二十出头的人来说，这是个巨大的打击，也让她意识到这份工作的责任有多么重大。
It was a lot to cope with for someone only in their early 20s, a reminder of the heavy responsibility this job carries.
看着那些在我父母临终前照顾他们的人，我明白了：虽然这份工作本身可能看起来很平凡，但要做好它所需要的情绪调节和社会技能——安抚困惑的人、陪伴孤独的人、安慰垂死的人，以及整天在陌生的家中进进出出，却不知道会遇到什么——其实远非易事。
Watching the carers who helped both my parents in their respective final weeks taught me that while the work itself might seem mundane, the emotional and social skills needed to do it well – to coax some sense out of the confused, to jolly along the lonely, and to soothe the dying, to walk in and out of unfamiliar houses all day long without quite knowing what you might find – are anything but.
然而，就像许多主要由女性从事的工作一样，护理工作长期以来一直被严重低估。
Yet like so many jobs predominantly done by women, care has long been relentlessly undervalued.
这意味着工资低廉、公众认可度低，而对于那些大部分是移民工人的护工来说，更糟糕的是，他们可能会突然意识到：政府的一个决定就能彻底颠覆他们的生活计划。加比·欣斯利夫是《卫报》的专栏作家。
That means lousy pay, little public recognition, and now – at least for the disproportionately large chunk of this workforce who are migrant workers – the disorientating realisation that the government can snap its fingers and all your life plans are upended overnight. Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist