Britons scrap over ID cards

– An immigration scandal which led to the resignation of Britain’s home secretary and sparked anger over the treatment of some migrants has reignited another debate over national identity cards.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd quit on Sunday after acknowledging she “inadvertently misled” parliament by denying the government had targets for the number of illegal migrants it deports.

Ministers have struggled for weeks to explain why some descendants of the “Windrush generation”, who were invited to Britain from former colonial Caribbean nations to plug labour shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, were denied basic rights. The issue put a multibillion-pound identity card scheme back on the table.

“Biometric cards are the best way to prove a citizen’s identity,” former home secretaries Charles Clarke and Alan Johnson wrote in a letter in The Times newspaper.

The UK scrapped identity cards in 2011, but still has a biometric residence permit system for foreigners looking to stay more than six months or permanently. Critics argue the system, only a decade old, is not helpful for migrants who came to Britain before then.

“The Windrush generation issues have shown us sometimes, even when a person has the legal right to be here, they can struggle to prove it when applying for residence documents,” said Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.

“Getting an ID card would be dependent on this too – so ID cards would not necessarily solve the problems some Commonwealth migrants face.”

Tetiana Bersheda, of online legal advice platform LexSnap, said Britain should consider using resources currently available, such as electricity bills, as proof of residence, and less expensive tools such as digital databases.

Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Sajid Javid, the son of immigrants, as home secretary on Monday. –