a young boy. He missed the renewal date by four or five days after this holiday. We have a red card and he has nothing.284 While other applicants lose their red cards because of failures to report changes of address or simply because they were not at home when the authorities checked on their residence. The president of an Iraqi Christian self-help organization, a 64-year-old man with a wife and two sons, told Human Rights Watch of the Kafkaesque ordeal that has left him undocumented: I had a red card and lived at the same address in Alexandroupolis. The police came and said I was not home. I went to renew my card with the Alexandroupolis police and they told me my file was sent to headquarters in Athens and told me to go there in two months. I brought my red card and they took it away. They said I was not at my residence. I never had a chance to appeal the denial of my red card. I went to GCR and UNHCR, but they couldn’t get it back either. They never gave me a first rejection. I don’t ever remember having an interview. I just got a paper on September 30, 2004 telling me I had 30 days to leave Greece. I have been living illegally for four years. My son needs an operation on his leg, but I can’t go to any clinic. I can’t work because I have no papers.285 Some asylum seekers experience long delays getting their red cards in the first place. They don’t fall out of the system because they are not recognized as being in the system in the first place. Human Rights Watch spoke to a 31-year-old Iraqi from Baghdad who says that he escaped Iraq after the Mahdi Army kidnapped him. He said that he did not apply for asylum while in detention in Samos because he thought it would mean longer detention. After his release he went to a lawyer who “took me to the police again, and they fingerprinted me again. That was two months ago, and I still don’t have a red card.”286 At the time of our interview he was living illegally beyond the 30-day required departure; he had been arrested twice, but released after being held for several hours in the police station. He is now homeless and sleeps in a park on the island of Samos. 284 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-72), Athens, June 4, 2008. 285 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-36), Athens, June 1 and June 4, 2008. 286 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, B-30), Samos, May 30, 2008. Stuck in a Revolving Door 104