GREAT WIN DRUSH CLIMBDOWN
Free passports for those who arrived before 1988 – and millions in payouts for victims treated like illegal immigrants
‘Unintended and devastating’ ‘Damage to family life’
EVERY single member of the Windrush generation and their children will be offered British citizenship, Amber Rudd promised yesterday.
In a bid to draw a line under the damaging scandal, the Home Secretary said those originally from the Commonwealth would qualify for the UK passport they ‘deserved’.
Anyone from the Commonwealth who arrived in the UK before 1988 will qualify because citizenship can be acquired after 30 years.
Fees of around £1,200, language tests and citizenship exams will all be waived as Miss Rudd vowed to ‘right the wrong people have suffered’.
Generous compensation, potentially totalling millions of pounds, will also be awarded to those who were mistakenly identified as illegal immigrants during a Home Office crackdown.
Members of the Windrush generation – named after the ship that brought the first migrants from the West Indies in 1948 – who have retired to their Caribbean homelands after living and working in Britain for decades will be allowed to come back. Many are cur- rently barred from returning to the country.
Miss Rudd unveiled the sweeping package of measures in response to ongoing fury over the ‘distressing’ treatment of those who came from the Commonwealth between 1948 and 1973 to help rebuild post-war Britain.
Every Windrush migrant was given an automatic right to stay when they arrived, but many never applied for passports or were formally naturalised, meaning it is now difficult for them to prove they are legally in the UK.
Changes to immigration rules in 2014 – dubbed the ‘hostile environment’ strategy – have meant some Windrush migrants have not been able to rent properties, work, open bank accounts, access NHS treatment or hold driving licences.
In a humiliating Commons appearance yesterday, Miss Rudd apologised again for the ‘unintended and devastating’ impact of the Home Office crackdown, which has even seen some Windrush migrants detained and threatened with deportation.
Faced by barracking from opposition MPs, the Home Secretary repeatedly rejected calls to resign over the row as well as claims she was acting as Theresa May’s ‘human shield’. Critics said ministers should have dealt with the crisis when it blew up a week ago.
Miss Rudd defended the drive to tackle illegal immigration but said it ‘should never’ have engulfed those who were ‘British in all but their legal status’.
Insisting the problem was created by the failures of successive governments dating back to the 1980s, she said: ‘The state has let these people down.’
But accepting responsibility, she added: ‘We were too slow to realise there was a group of people that needed to be treated differently. The system was too bureaucratic when these people were in touch. We need to give a human face to how we work and exercise greater judgment where and when it is justified.’
Miss Rudd said there needed to be ‘a change of culture’ at the Home Office.
Unveiling the measures, she said the respect for the Windrush generation was ‘undimmed’. She said: ‘None of this can undo the pain, already endured, but I hope it demonstrates the Government’s commitment to put these wrongs right going forward.’
The new package means anyone from the Windrush generaanyone tion and children who were born or are currently living in the UK will be allowed to apply for citizenship – the step before securing a passport. As immigrants are able to qualify for citizenship after 30 years, anyone from the Commonwealth who arrived in the UK before 1988 will be offered passports and paperwork to confirm they have a right to be here.
Miss Rudd also said the citizenship offer would apply not just to the families of the Caribbean migrants who came to the UK between 1948 and 1973 but from other Commonwealth nations who settled in the UK over that period. A new scheme will also be set up to compensate people who have suffered loss, including legal fees and wages from lost jobs, run by an independent ombudsman.
A customer contact centre, staffed by 50 senior caseworkers, will advise individuals on how to get citizenship. A taskforce is already helping people pull together documents needed to formalise immigration status.
Miss Rudd said nine cases had been settled by a Home Office team established to deal with the crisis while 84 individuals had had their documents processed.
All Home Office records dating back to 2002 would be checked to see if anyone had been wrongly deported, she told MPs, adding that no cases had been identified so far with about 4,200 of 8,000 documents verified.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said the row was ‘one of the biggest scandals in the administration of home affairs’.
She said it ‘should not have been a surprise’ to ministers who were warned about the crackdown on migrants.
She welcomed the promise of compensation but said there was a lack of detail and the sums should ‘reflect the damage to family life’.