Caribbean citizens

Seventy years after the MV Empire Windrush brought the first Caribbean immigrants to work in Britain, hundreds of their children have been threatened with deportation or detention as a result of bureaucratic incompetence and policy confusion. They have fallen foul of changes in immigration rules that require the production of documents to prove residency rights. Many of those who arrived in the Fifties and Sixties did so under the impression they were British subjects – as indeed they then were – and felt no need to seek naturalisation or apply for the requisite paperwork. Children would have travelled on their parents’ passports without any personal ID which they have never subsequently obtained.

Now as they qualify for pensions or apply for benefits or jobs, they are unable to produce the documents demanded and a number have been threatened with removal from the country which has been their home for almost all their lives. This is clearly unjust and it is to the Government’s discredit that this matter was not taken seriously until it was highlighted by the media.

Belatedly, Amber Rudd has established a task force, though given her department’s record that is no guarantee that it will get a grip. Typically, it does not even know how many people have been deported. Moreover, this is unlikely only to affect Caribbean immigrants since many came from the Indian sub-continent and east Africa before the 1971 Immigration Act changed their status. It is perverse to have pledged unqualified citizenship rights to millions of EU citizens and their dependents while questioning those of people entitled to settle here for decades.