Suresh Grover told to ‘go home’

LIFE-LONG anti-fascist campaigner, Suresh Grover, who has been a British citizen for several decades last week received a text message from the UK Border Agency, telling him "You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have right to remain."

Suresh Grover is currently head of the west London-based civil rights organisation, the Monitoring Group. He's entitled to be here – has been since 1966 – and he has indisputably "given back" to the community.

He was one of the first leading lights in the campaign to bring Stephen Lawrence's killers to justice. The other day, Grover received a text.

The message was a mistake, made by the computer company Capita working on behalf of the UKBA. The Home Office gives Capita regular "data drop" information from its database of people who have had a "negative outcome".

Suresh Grover’s text was one of many intimidating messages now being sent out to people who are deemed to be in Britain illegally.

It is the UKBS’s replacement for the ill-judged giant post vans telling illegal immigrants to go home, which had the effect of winding up racist hostility to legal immigrants and frightening many people who are perfectly entitled to be here.

But Suresh Grover is not the only British citizen to have received one of Capita’s text messages by mistake. At least 200 others have made official complaints and there may be many more who are afraid to do so.