J’can man to challenge Home Office over Windrush Scandal compensation
RAYMOND LEE, a Jamaican who was denied compensation for immigration issues he has been facing with the UK Home Office since 1999, has welcomed news that he has been given permission to bring a judicial review against that decision under the Windrush Compensation Scheme.
Speaking from his home in Clarendon, Jamaica, Lee said: “Not only was I unfairly denied entry and removed from the UK when I was fully entitled to return, I have since been denied compensation for the impact this has had on my life. In the same way that immigration officials failed to allow me entry into the country 24 years ago, the Home Office continues to get it wrong over my compensation claim.
“This is quite simply adding insult to injury. While I am pleased the High Court will review the compensation decision, it is a pity that I have had to go to these lengths just to get the fair treatment I deserve.”
Lee’s case to challenge the Home Secretary’s decision of December 2022 to refuse compensation under the scheme is being handled by Leigh Day, one of the UK’s leading immigration law firms.
According to a release from his lawyers, his trouble with immigration began in July 1999 when he was denied re-entry after returning from a visit to Jamaica. Lee was travelling on a Jamaican passport, as he had done previously without any issues, when he was refused entry at Heathrow Airport, detained and removed from the UK.
Under immigration rules at the time, Jamaican citizens did not need a visa to enter the UK. Lee had last been in the UK a month before and believed that he was entitled to re-admission as he had first come to the UK in 1971 as a child. However, because he was travelling for the first time on a new passport, immigration officials refused to allow him re-entry because he did not have any documents with him to show that he had lawful status.
This was despite his Jamaican passport clearly having been issued in London the previous month and his providing a UK address where he was going to live, the release outlined.
DECISION FLAWED
Leigh Day’s lawyers say there is no evidence immigration officers made enquiries as to whether he had Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) status when he was last in the UK, or to check this address before deciding to refuse entry, detaining and then removing him to Jamaica.
Lee later returned to the UK in 2000 and was subsequently granted ILR. In 2009, he returned to Jamaica when his father became ill and died. Since then, he has not returned to the UK, initially because he was afraid that he would be detained. In 2018, he was granted a 10-year visit visa through the Windrush Scheme, but he has been unable to afford the air fare to travel to the UK.
In 2021, Lee applied to the Windrush Compensation Scheme seeking compensation for his detention and removal from the UK, loss of access to employment and the impact on his life caused by the failure to admit him to the UK in 1999. The Home Office rejected his claim on the assessment that his ILR had previously lapsed because he had been out of the country for two years before 1999.
His lawyers argue further that this decision was fundamentally flawed because, under immigration law until 2000, all ILR immediately lapsed when someone in his situation left the UK. Citizens of Commonwealth countries were instead given the right of readmission to the UK as a returning resident. Therefore, Lee could not possibly have held ILR at the time he was refused re-entry, and neither did he need it.
EXPERIENCED ILLTREATMENT
In bringing the Judicial Review, Lee, who is represented by Leigh Day solicitor Stephanie Hill, will challenge the Home Secretary’s decision of December 20, 2022 to refuse compensation under the scheme on three grounds. These are: the meaning of the requirement under the Windrush Compensation Scheme for an applicant to show that their losses were caused by an inability to demonstrate lawful status; the requirements of immigration law in 1999 (when Lee was refused re-entry), and the approach taken to the evidence in his case.
Hill said: “Like so many members of the Windrush Generation, our client has experienced ill-treatment from the Home Office for many years. First, he was denied entry to the UK and sent to Jamaica, despite having first arrived in the UK as a child in the 1970s. To compound this unfairness, he has since been denied compensation for the impact this had on his life.
“We will argue that the Home Office has failed to apply its own immigration law correctly and has taken an unreasonable approach to the evidence in this case. Our client is pleased to have been granted permission for a Judicial Review in the High Court.”
The Home Secretary is to defend the claim in its entirety, including on the basis that Lee’s leave had lapsed in July 1999 and because he has been unable to show the conditions on which he had been admitted to the UK when he had last entered.
A spokesperson said the Home Office did not give comments on individual cases under review.
The Windrush Compensation Scheme was launched in 2019 by the Home Office as part of a set of measures to ‘right the wrongs’ experienced by the Windrush generation and their families. This was after the Windrush Scandal in 2017 found that the Home Office illegally sought to remove many members of the Windrush generation under its ‘hostile environment’ policy by telling them that they had no right to be in the UK.