Windrush Generation

So many sad and shocking stories

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43794366

No danger of having to eat my words - the HO and the PO will not put things right - they will prevaricate and dissemble and hope it all just goes away. Explain to me the justification for the removal of the clause in the 2014 Act - thought not and why the PO refused initially to meet with the Commonweslth heads ? If it walks like a racist and talks like a racist .......

I understood that the U.K. Border Agency recommended getting rid of the Windrush landing slips in 2009 but no action was taken until the Home Office made the decision under the Coalition Government in 2010.

I heard that this was a small part of the need at the time to transfer the information on official paper documents onto the internet.

lemongrove Even if this were just a "mistake" (and I have my doubts about that), they haven't dealt with the matter quickly. Some people who have lived here virtually all their lives have been put into detention centres and have spent money they can ill afford on employing lawyers to help them. I think apologies and promises that action will be taken are long overdue and, as a man said on TV today, such apology was practically dragged out of her, so not very convincing.

Was it a "mistake" on the part of Theresa May to pilot the use of vans emblazened with the words " "In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest." Language which Yvette Cooper described as very similar to that used by the National Front.

TM was a hopeless Home Secretary. She presided over chaos in the passport office, getting rid of over 1,000 jobs at a cost of £19 million in severance payments, which resulted in massive backlogs, followed by the panicked re-employment of over 1,000 staff.

She was also in office at the time of the Yarl's Wood scandal where it was found that female asylum seekers were being sexually intimidated and assaulted by guards. TM refused to allow a UN representative to visit the centre.

She refused to allow Afghan interpreters to stay in the UK, despite the fact that returning them to Afghanistan would put their lives seriously at risk.

She was also in office when significant cuts to border staff were made, leading to the relaxation of border checks on non-EU nationals and the claim that serious criminals were being allowed into the country.

She cut police numbers and alienated the police by using a very combative tone in her speeches to them.

Eloethan
Your first paragraph is true and we all know what has happened, with the exception of , I think it was a mistake and not the government being racist and actually wanting to send home people who have been here all their lives practically.It would hardly make political sense to do that, quite apart from anything else.Some people haven’t been able to prove that they are who they say they are, but millions have been able to.The ones who haven’t ,have been treated badly by the system.
Apologies, putting things right, and in some cases, compensation is what is needed and I would be very surprised if that didn’t now happen very quickly and about time too.
There is no racist angle in my view nor do think it’s a deliberate act.

As to the question of T May being a good/bad Home Secretary in her time there, I suppose you could list what any top politician does and people would either like/dislike
The policies depending in their own views and politics.
Your last two points are ones I agree were mistakes.

Isn't this rather too many 'mistakes' not to have come from an underlying attitude?......

Which you imagine to be racist Alie?
Why?
Relaxing border checks on non EU nationals which may have resulted in criminals coming here ( and they surely were) was as a result of cuts to staff.A bad move, but not a racist one.
Taking a hard tone with police was another mistake, but again, not a racist one.

We are only hearing about the tip of the iceberg over the landing documents - I would think that many people have yet to discover they are in this position - maybe now it will be dealt with far more carefully and people will not be sent these awful letters.
Similar things are happening to EU citizens too - people who are married to Brits and lived and worked in the U.K. for years. Some are mothers of young children who have stayed home to look after them - they then cannot show continuous proof of earnings - although their spouse earns enough money and has been supporting the family.
Before anyone can work they need a NI number - it is disgraceful that these cards and records are not accepted as proof of working etc. For us your NI number is used by the Tax Office and anything to do with pensions etc - they could gradually be extended to include other information making it more of an identity card.

The EU are going to insist on watertight laws for the EU citizens in U.K. so this same sort of thing does not happen to EU citizens years down the line as has happened to the Windrush people.

Investigation needed:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43818860

As to the question of T May being a good/bad Home Secretary in her time there, I suppose you could list what any top politician does and people would either like/dislike the policies depending in their own views and politics.

So in relation to issues like that below it's just a matter of ones political leanings that colour one's judgement of May's performance as Home Secretary? I suppose that if one supported May one could interpret this as being perfectly benign?



She was also in office at the time of the Yarl's Wood scandal wahere it was found that female asylum seekers were being sexually intimidated and assaulted by guards. TM refused to allow a UN representative to visit the centre.
:-)

Does this raise again the thorny question of ID cards? Now landlords, employers, the NHS and even polling stations are supposed to check people’s ID.
ID cards would presumably have made the Windrush generation more secure.
The Windrush issue aside, after Brexit there is going to be suspicion of the right of Europeans (and others) to access NHS, voting, work and housing.
I’m not sure where I would stand on this but it almost seems inevitable.

I have heard the fact that the U.K. is one of the few countries which does not have some form of ID card. It must be fairly easy to start with the NI cards and add stuff to them and get them updated - they manage to do it with bank cards etc and here in France your card which gives you access to the health system is updated very easily - in our case by the pharmacist - she can tell when she dispenses the meds if it needs doing and does it on a special machine.

mostly given the current omnishambles (aka the Home Office) I must have visibly paled at the thought of these incompetents introducing ID cards. I’m not actually anti the idea but have absolutely no faith whatsoever in the ability of the HO to bring these in an an achievable, effective and efficient way without causing havoc, harm and worry to those ( the many?) who do not fit a simple template.

And lemon just because not everything the PO does is racially motivated, doesn’t mean that she is not a racist. I’ve said before, there are many ways of being racist and not having the ability or the will to think through the potential racist outcomes of particular actions is one of them. It’s not just about shouting ‘Go home’ ( or putting it on vans)

mostlyharmless your sentence ^after Brexit there is going to be suspicion of the right of Europeans (and others) to access NHS, voting, work and housing^ is chilling. I have this awful vision of anyone with a 'foreign'accent, or wearing non-European clothing, or with darker skin being questioned wherever they go. Although in principle, ID cards sound like a solution, I would be incensed if some jobsworth wearing a hi-vis jacket stopped me in the street and asked to see my ID. This has all the makings of turning into a nasty country. The list of things that happened under TM as HS is appalling and to go back to the start of this thread, it makes me ashamed to be British.

mostly When ID cards were first mooted,( quite a while ago now) I thought, hmmm, not sure I like the idea of having to produce ‘papers’ as it seems a very unnatural thing for life in the UK.However, many countries do have them and presumably the citizens get used to it.If it will make things easier for all, I am now thinking it could be a good idea.
There is the thought though, that ID cards could be made to order( fraudulently) and I wonder how other countries deal with that aspect?

I don’t think there is a foolproof system re fraud but in the same way as passports have become much more difficult to counterfeit, I guess any ID cards that would be commissioned would have heightened security features. The problem is that the HO would have put all the wrong information on the system so the cards might be counterfeit proof but wrong and so not worth the cards they were printed on ?. AR in charge of producing ID cards ????????????

How can some of your suggest that this is about racism, & that it has been done deliberately .?If that was the case those people affected would have been made to leave years ago or any time between then & now. I for one am releaved ( but disappointed ) that this was a massive cock up,let’s get our teeth into that and not make into something its not .

I am sure the people directly affected think it is!

Yes it’s easy for us to have opinions when we are not directly involved, I’m sure those people involved must be going through all sorts of emotions. But at the same time it’s a bit of a peculiar thing to do deliberately if it has taken this long for it to come to light , there is no logic .

The most important thing is to put it right now,& I’m sure we will all be up in arms if any one these people are made to leave this country, that is the time for us all to stand together . I hope & pray that the right thing is done, if not then that is the time to protest in every way we can.

Individual cases have been known to lawyers and case workers for some time. This was always going to be the outcome of the tory's 2014 Immigration changes so it is deliberate. The Guardian has been pursuing this matter for over 6 months. From their editorial:

"When Mrs May first spoke of a hostile environment, she presented it as a matter of fairness: making sure that all abided by the same rules. But treating people as guilty until proved innocent, making mistakes at the cost of those applying, and handling lives so callously sits oddly with the sense of decency and fair play so often claimed as inherently British – whether those involved arrived from the Commonwealth half a century ago, or much more recently".

The former head of the civil service was scathing in his opinion on Newsnight (apologies as I can't get the link to copy)

Still perplexing to understand how people who come here to live do not at some stage in their life need to know if they are legal. If they came on parents passport have they all never needed to apply for a passport if they have been here all this time, or hav they thought if they keep quiet no one will check and sadly someone has decided to check?
I wonder if this is an issue within the many different communities that have settled in UK, over the past 50 or so years, or did they understand the process?
Maybe it's a sad secret that many have kept all these years. It would be sad to change the status quo for these, but the law is probably a useful piece of legislation to curb illegal settlement.

Joelsnan, because the rules changed. None of this group are illegal so it's not anything about them "keeping quiet". From an immigration lawyer:
"The Windrush Generation refers to the Commonwealth citizens who came to the UK between 1948 and 1971. These Commonwealth citizens were encouraged to come to the UK to fill the countries labour shortages – such as bus drivers and nurses. Yet, when the Immigration Act 1971 (“the 1971 Act”) came into force, Commonwealth citizens lost their automatic right to remain in the UK and they faced the same restrictions as migrants from elsewhere. For those who were already living in the UK, they were granted Indefinite Leave to Remain and for decades since then, many of the Windrush Generation considered themselves as British. However, at the time these Commonwealth citizens, mainly from the Caribbean, were not issued with the requisite documentation which demonstrates their right to be in the UK.

When Theresa May was Home Secretary in 2012, she introduced a Hostile Environment Policy in order to reduce the UK’s net migration figure to less than 100,000 and crack down on illegal immigration. As a result, many of the Windrush Generation have fallen victim to the Home Office’s robust and objective policies and some have recently lost their jobs, access to NHS services, or even been detained in immigration removal centres. Theresa May’s changes to the UK’s immigration laws and environment has meant that the Windrush Generation have had to prove that they have been living in the UK for decades by providing 4 sources of documents such as bank statements and payslips for every year they have been in the country. This is despite these individuals having paid tax in the UK for decades and frankly an impossible and ridiculous task."