Windrush: Repeal the 2014 Immigration Act!

by New Worker correspondent

HUNDREDS of protesters gathered in Whitehall, opposite Downing Street, last Saturday to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May and the repeal of the 2014 Immigration and Asylum Act that was the main cause of the “hostile environment” to immigrants and the Windrush catastrophe.

May has apologised in Parliament for the outrageous deportations, threats of deportation and denial of jobs, housing, NHS care and other services to elderly people who came to Britain from the West Indies as children with their parents in the 1950s, ‘60s and early ‘70s by invitation to help post-war reconstruction here.

They came as British subjects, before their home islands were given independence. When Jamaica and the other islands were made independent a law was passed in the early 1970s granting people who had come from the West Indies full rights to continue living and working here without limitation.

But the 2014 Act, drawn up by May as Home Secretary at the time, took away those rights and made it conditional on these people having full documentation for every year they had lived and worked here – after she, in 2010, had ordered the shredding of archived landing passes that could have proved every one of these people came here legally.

But in spite of May’s apologies the Act is still being used to threaten more of the Windrush generation with the loss of their right to stay here. May claims to have set up a task force to put things right but this seems to consist of help and guidance for these people to be able to obtain the right identification documentation to comply with the Act – and it will cost them heavily. The hostile environment to immigrants remains very much in place.

Furthermore, last week May ordered her MPs to vote down a parliamentary motion to reveal all the documents connected to the Act and its implementation.

Protesters chanted for the repeal of the Act and for May to be deported, and for an immediate end to deportations and detention of Commonwealth citizens. They also demanded that compensation be awarded to those who had been deported, threatened with deportation or detained, and those who lost housing, jobs, benefits and were denied NHS treatment because of the Government's policy.

The Windrush caseload last week hit 3,000 and is increasing daily.

Speaking on Saturday, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said: "Comrades, I’m here to show my solidarity with the Windrush generation. And say how pleased I am that I was the first person to call for [former Home Secretary] Amber Rudd’s resignation. And then she resigned.

"And you know why she had to resign, not because of what she said in a committee but because somebody had to take responsibility for what was done to the Windrush generation. And it happened on her watch.

“I am not under any illusion, when it comes to the Windrush scandal all roads lead back to Theresa May."

She added: "The Windrush scandal doesn’t end here. We need to know how many people were deported, we know to know how many were detained. We need to know how many weren’t allowed to come back into this country.

“But above all, we have to continue fighting for fairness and humane treatment of migrants.”

In the crowd, Yvonne Williams, 58, who was released from Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre just last week, said she was “screaming” with joy.

Ms Williams’ mother was part of the Windrush generation and came to the UK from Jamaica. Ms Williams said she joined her mother in Britain in 2001 after her grandmother died in Jamaica.

She said her applications to stay were repeatedly refused by the Home Office and that despite her release she is still concerned about what her future holds.

Describing her eight months in detention, Ms Williams said it was “torture” and that it left people “traumatised”.

“It is very hard, every day you’re thinking, oh, they’re going to come and take me,” she said.

Weyman Bennett, joint general secretary of Unite Against Fascism and Stand Up To Racism – the organisers of the protest – also spoke. His family travelled from Jamaica between 1958 and 1966. His mother worked in the NHS and his father joined the British Army.

“Amber Rudd took the blame, but I believe that Theresa May is responsible for it, and she should go,” he said. “I hope she is held accountable for what she did, because the people’s voices have to be heard."

Stop deportation flights!

CAMPAIGNERS from Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) demonstrated outside Jamaican High Commission on May Day calling for an immediate halt to forced deportation charter flights; one such flight to Jamaica is scheduled to leave this Friday.

And people from the Windrush generation are still being booked on these flights in spite of Prime Minister Theresa May’s apologies last week over the horrendous injustices of treating people who have lived and worked many decades in Britain and who arrived here as British citizens when Jamaica was still a British colony.

Former Home Secretary Amber Rudd has resigned over the scandal of these elderly people who have worked and paid taxes in Britain all their lives but have had their right to citizenship taken away from the by changes in immigration law unless they can provide documentary proof for every years that they that they have lived here and a hefty fee for a special identification document.

They are not only threatened with sudden deportation from their families and settled lives but immigration laws passed by Theresa May when she was Home Secretary have forced employers, landlords and public services to become proxy immigration police be demanding documentary proof of immigration status from employees, tenants and service users. This mean those without the documentation have lost jobs, lost homes and been refused various services, including NHS care.

Zita Holbourne of BARAC said: “It’s astonishing that charter flights would be continuing at this time in the midst of the Windrush debacle.

“The Government has not set out a clear policy on who is covered from Commonwealth countries, so it makes no sense for this to be happening.

“Most people being deported in this way to Jamaica will be part of a Windrush family who, if not of Windrush generation themselves, will likely be the children or grandchildren of people who are.”

Ms Holbourne said a woman with British siblings, children and grandchildren was booked on the flight, served a removal notice and told she does not have enough family ties in Britain.

"She has subsequently been taken off the flight and released from Yarl’s Wood but there are likely to be more such examples.

“This injustice must be stopped and [everyone affected] properly compensated.”

A 63-year-old grandmother who has been held in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre for nine months is among those told she will be put on the plane alongside an unknown number of fellow deportees.

Yvonne Smith, who has been diagnosed with diabetes since her arrival at Yarl’s Wood, had lived in Birmingham while caring for her 92-year-old father.

He arrived in 1957 as one of thousands of Windrush migrants, but Ms Smith moved to Britain two decades ago after her grandmother died in Jamaica.

“I have no one there, I have nowhere to go, I would be on the streets,” she told the {Independent} from inside Yarl’s Wood, where detainees have recently been on hunger strike over their treatment.

 “I have no family there, my dad is here, my siblings are here, my mum is dead. I have four grandchildren of my own, two sisters and four brothers, but the Government says I have ‘no ties’.”

Ms Smith said she had been caring for her 92-year-old father, who now faces being taken into NHS care against his wishes, and “just cries” every time she speaks to him on the phone.

On the day Theresa May issued a formal apology to Caribbean leaders the treatment of the Windrush migrants, Ms Smith was sent a letter from the Home Office announcing she “has no basis to remain in the United Kingdom”.

It said she was “to be removed on a specially chartered flight to Jamaica” code-named PVT070 at any time from 22 April, but the {Independent} has been told the Government will not be chartering a flight in May.

Another Jamaican woman, 58-year-old Yvonne Williams, was served with the same notice before being abruptly freed from Yarl’s Wood last Friday.

Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary, said the planned flight showed why the Windrush generation feel unable to trust the Government’s promises.

“So much for all the assurances and the apologies from the prime minister and the home secretary,” she added.

David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, called for a wider review of “hostile environment” immigration policies and for the rights of Windrush citizens to be guaranteed in law.

“Warm words from ministers are not enough. We need legislative guarantees,” he told the Independent. “I have long been of the view that the Home Office should cease the inhumane practice of deportation charter flights.”