New U.K. official vows shift on migrants
Will ‘do right’ by those facing deportation
LONDON — Britain’s new interior minister vowed Monday to sort out an immigration scandal shaking the government, saying that as the child of immigrants, he was angered by the mistreatment of long-term residents from the Caribbean.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said he would do “whatever it takes” to resolve the status of all those who have become innocent casualties of the Conservative government’s immigration policies.
“We will do right by the Windrush generation,” Javid told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Javid to the key job Monday, hours after predecessor Amber Rudd resigned over her role in what has become known as the Windrush scandal.
The furor began weeks ago when the Guardian newspaper reported that some people from the Caribbean who have lived in Britain for decades had been refused medical care or threatened with deportation because they couldn’t produce paperwork proving their right to reside in the country.
Those affected are known as the “Windrush generation” after the ship Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought hundreds of Caribbean immigrants to Britain.
They and many subsequent Commonwealth immigrants had an automatic right to settle in the U.K. But some have now been denied housing, jobs or medical treatment because of requirements that employers and doctors check people’s immigration status. Others have been told they are in Britain illegally.
Outrage at their treatment has piled pressure on May, who was home secretary between 2010 and 2016 and introduced tough immigration policies intended to make Britain a “hostile environment” for unauthorized migrants.
Javid, the son of Pakistani immigrants, said that when he saw the plight of the Windrush migrants, “I thought that it could be my mum, my brother, my uncle or even me.”