Branded an illegal immigrant ... after paying tax for 30 years
Sarah O’Connor arrived in Britain from Jamaica in 1966 when she was just six years old. Like many of her generation, she’d been left in the care of her grandparents while her mother, young and unmarried, went to seek work in Britain.
after her mother married, settled in Wolverhampton and had three more children, they were finally reunited.
It would not be a happy ending and Sarah’s life turned out to be full of challenges. But she worked hard, embracing everything this country had to offer.
She married, had five children of her own and four grandchildren and, for the past 20 years, has lived happily in a neat end-of-terrace house in Dagenham, East London.
‘I’ve always thought of myself as British and I was very proud to be part of this country,’ Sarah, now 57, says. ‘Or I was.’
Last summer her world fell apart. In June, she lost her job as business sales assistant in a local computer shop where she’d worked for more than 16 years.
When she went to the Job Centre to sign on, she was told she wasn’t entitled to benefits. ‘I’m used to working. I’ve always worked,’ she says. ‘So when I was be told I wasn’t entitled to anything…’
The reason? Sarah did not have a valid British passport. as a Windrush immigrant, one of the 500,000 people who left the West Indies between 1948 and 1970 to come to Britain, she had always been entitled to a passport. She had just never got round to applying for one.
‘I had a driving licence and I’d paid tax and national insurance for over 30 years, but I’d never been out of the country. So I’d never really needed a passport.’
It took all her strength to make it out of the Job Centre without weeping. ‘When I got home, I broke down. To think, I’ve been here more than half a century. all my family – my kids, my grandkids are here. Just imagine – after 30-odd years of working, paying tax, national insurance, voting, everything – to be told you’re an illegal immigrant!’
Which, of course, she is not. Under the 1971 Immigration act, all Commonwealth citizens already living in the UK were given indefinite permission to stay.
But the home Office did not keep a record of those granted leave to remain or issue any paperwork confirming it, and the onus has always been on the individual to prove they are in Britain legally, rather than the other way round.
For many – including Sarah – it has been a difficult and often cripplingly expensive process.
Dnot to be beaten, Sarah started applying for jobs: ‘I didn’t care what I did, I just wanted to work.’
To her horror, she found that she was unemployable. While she sailed through interviews, every potential employer now needed to see a valid British passport.
‘They needed it to run checks to see I wasn’t a criminal,’ she says.
after all she had overcome in her life, it was the bitterest of blows. When she flew to London on her Jamaican passport – an unaccompanied minor perched on a stewardess’s knee – it was to a family of strangers.
‘I’d come to a strange country to a mother I’d never known, new siblings and I spoke very little English. I kept running away for the next few months.’
She was terrified and felt like an imposter. her stepfather used to beat her and ‘things didn’t work out’. Within months of arriving, Sarah was placed in care and stayed there until she was 18.
The experience would have broken many children, but not Sarah. She was determined to succeed.
‘I tried to get the best education I could, to better myself and make something of my life,’ she says. She studied hard and gained a series of qualifications in psychology and sociology.
‘having been in care and knowing what kids went through, I wanted to put something back. I wanted to be a social worker and help people.’
But then she met Paul, fell in love and when she was 25 they had their first daughter, Stephanie, now 31. Despite the demands of motherhood, she always worked at whatever came her way, from cleaning or catering to her job in the computer shop.
She and Paul had split after 19 years, so when she found herself unemployed – and unemployable – her debts mounted quickly and she was forced to sell her car.
She couldn’t afford the £1,200 application fee for a naturalisation number – the precursor to applying for a British passport – and was haunted by the fear of deportation to a country she didn’t know. ‘Jamaica is the place I was born, but it’s not my home! I was scared of a knock at the door. It was terrifying.
‘I became very depressed and anxious. I could not sleep because suddenly I didn’t belong here.’
Despite – or perhaps because of – everything she’d been through, Sarah decided to fight for rights as a British citizen, with the help of her MP. The home Office finally agreed to waive the £237 fee for a biometric card that gives her the right to work in the UK.
It will provide some security, but in her view adds insult to injury. ‘I wouldn’t have minded so much if I’d only just come here. But I’ve been here over half a century. This is my home, my country,’ she says.
‘Wouldn’t it have been simpler – and fairer – to have given me a passport? I love this country but something is fundamentally wrong for this to have happened. The immigration laws seem to be punishing people like me who worked for everything they have.’
Yesterday she was back at work, part-time, as a cleaner. ‘It’s only £294 a month. But I’d far rather be working and paying my way.’