“Illegal immigration” is headline news in England and the Caribbean diaspora. A major outcry and scandal about deportations and the resident status of Afro-Caribbean/West Indian Brits has involved UK Prime Minister Theresa May, the Home Office, Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Parliament, Caribbean heads of state and, most importantly, the victims: black British residents and their families, whose origins are from Caribbean British former colonies. They have been dubbed “The Windrush Generation.”
Anti-immigrant rhetoric and overt racism in England mirrors similar right-wing movements in the rest of Europe and touted here in the U.S. by Donald Trump and his Republican bigot cabal.
Labour Party MP David Lammy’s impassioned speech in Parliament has resounded far and wide. Here is a link to the text of Lammy’s speech. Read an excerpt below:
Can I say to the Home Secretary that the relationship between this country and the West Indies and Caribbean is inextricable.
The first British ships arrived in the Caribbean in 1623. And despite slavery, despite colonisation, 25,000 Caribbeans served in first world war and second world war alongside British troops. When my parents and their generation arrived in this country under the Nationality act of 1948, they arrived here as British citizens.
It is inhumane and cruel for so many of that Windrush generation to have suffered so long in this condition, and for the secretary of state only to have made a statement today on this issue.
Can she explain how many have been deported? She suggested earlier that she would ask the high commissioners. It is her department that has deported them. She should know the number.
Can she tell the house how many have been detained as prisoners in their own country? Can she tell the house how many have been denied health under the National Health Service? How many have been denied pensions? How many have lost their job?
This is a day of national shame, and it has come about because of a hostile environment policy that was begun under her Prime Minister.
Let us call it like it is. If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas and that is what has happened with this far-right rhetoric in this country. Can she apologise properly? Can she explain how quickly this team will act to ensure that the thousands of British men and women, denied their rights in this country under her watch in the home office are satisfied.
May and Rudd have scrambled to issue “apologies” in response to pressures from the media, black community organizers, Labor party politicians, and Caribbean leaders. Here’s a take from The Guardian titled “Windrush U-turn is welcome, but May's policy was just cruel”:
For years, the government’s approach to Windrush children with immigration problems has been both absurd and cruel. Over the past five months, as this scandal gradually unfolded, the Guardian has documented numerous cases of retirement-age UK residents who have described how the Home Office’s refusal to believe that they are in the UK legally has ruined their lives. Many have cried as they explained how upsetting it is to be classed as an illegal immigrant after more than 50 years in the UK, studying, working, bringing up children in a country they believed to be their own.
It concludes:
For years it has been left to tiny charities like Praxis and St Mungo’s in London and the Refugee and Migrant Centre in Wolverhampton to pick up the shattered lives of Windrush generation people fighting to regularise their immigration status. They will be watching to see whether their case load reduces in the wake of these announcements, or if the official policy of cruelty will persist.
Lammy is not allowing the “apology” to stand as a way to brush this scandal under the rug, and is continuing to push for more investigation.
Labour’s David Lammy made the call yesterday after uncovering figures showing that 900 people aged over 50 were removed from the UK in 2015, with 300 sent to Jamaica.
The former cabinet minister says Home Secretary Amber Rudd must look again at the case “to ensure no wrongful detentions have taken place”. The call came two hours after Lammy revealed that the imminent deportation of a 35-year-old man had been halted following his intervention. Mozi Haynes, whose mother was from the Windrush Generation, was supposed to be removed today, but Lammy said this would be reviewed...Lammy tweeted that confirmation had been given by Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes, who on Monday told reporters that some people may have been deported “in error”.
This cartoon from Steve Bell illustrates the situation brilliantly:
I’ve been following David Lammy on Twitter for some time and have watched this unfold via his stream.
He raises the key question about compensation:
When I saw this tweet I thought this was something from a comedy or satire site, a la The Onion or Wonkette. WTF??? When we deport you, “Try to be Jamaican” and speak with an accent:
It turned out to be all too real.
Here’s some of the recent British coverage:
The Windrush Generation: Fighting to be British
They came here as children, attended British schools, worked British jobs and built British lives. Now thousands of people who arrived in the UK decades ago – in the first wave of Commonwealth immigration in the 1950s and 60s – are living with the threat of deportation.
Known as the Windrush generation after the British ship ‘The Empire Windrush’, which travelled from the Caribbean to Tilbury Docks in Essex in 1948, many have made the UK their home for their entire lives.
Channel 4 News has been following the stories of a few of this generation as they fight for their right to be British – a nationality they had always taken for granted.
There has been pushback from Caribbean governments:
Caribbean diplomats have condemned the Home Office’s treatment of many long-term Commonwealth-born UK residents as “illegal immigrants”. They have called on the UK government to resolve an immigration anomaly that has left many people being denied health services, prevented from working, and facing destitution, detention and possible deportation despite having lived in the country for decades.
At an unprecedented meeting of high commissioners from all the Caribbean Commonwealth nations, diplomats called on the UK government to adopt a more compassionate approach to individuals who arrived from Caribbean countries as children in the 1950s and 1960s and were never formally naturalised. Thousands are encountering serious immigration problems because they have no documents. Guy Hewitt, the high commissioner for Barbados to the UK, said: “I am dismayed that people who gave their all to Britain could be seemingly discarded so matter-of-factly.”
As preparations are made to mark the 70th anniversary of the Windrush generation of people who moved from Caribbean countries at the invitation of the British government, he said: “It is regrettable to find people who came in that era facing a struggle to remain in this country, which should be their right. It’s an awful predicament.
“Seventy years after Windrush, we are again facing a new wave of hostility. This is about people saying, as they said 70 years ago, ‘Go back home.’ It is not good enough for people who gave their lives to this country to be treated like this.”
After getting quite a bit of bad press, UK Prime Minister May suddenly decided to hold a meeting while claiming that she had never rejected having one.
The Church of England has spoken out on the issue, saying its bishops want immigration amnesty for the 'Windrush generation':
Four Church of England bishops have joined a call for an immigration amnesty for people who moved to the UK from the Caribbean decades ago but now face uncertainty over their status.
The bishops are urging people in their dioceses to sign a petition demanding an amnesty for those who arrived as minors between 1948 and 1971. The petition, which had gathered almost 58,000 signatures by 5pm on Friday, also calls for the government to pay compensation for “loss and hurt”.
Here are some of the stories:
For those of you who would like to learn more of the history, this documentary series is a good place to start.
Windrush is a four-part series of one-hour television documentaries originally broadcast on BBC2 in 1998[1] to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival in Britain of the MV Empire Windrush, the ship that brought the first significant wave of post-war West Indian immigrants. The series was produced and directed by David Upshal. Its Executive Producer was Trevor Phillips. It won the 1999 Royal Television Society Award for Best Documentary Series. Contributors include Lenny Henry, Jazzy B, Doreen Lawrence, Valerie Amos, Rosalind Howells, Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng, Ben Bousquet, Carroll Thompson, Charlie Williams, Cy Grant, Professor Stuart Hall, Ken Livingstone, Darcus Howe, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Columbus Deniston, Ulric Cross, Chris Blackwell, Mike Phillips.
This documentary examines West Indian British service in the World Wars —
Soldiers of the Caribbean: Britain's forgotten war heroes
They fought against Hitler and helped rebuild Britain - yet the contributions of thousands of men and women from Caribbean colonies during World War Two have been largely forgotten.
Some 10,000 left their families and homes to join the British armed forces, working behind the scenes and on the frontline to defeat the Nazis.
"We were British subjects and that was something to be proud of," said Victor Brown, a Jamaican who fought with the Merchant Navy.
Although Britain was initially reluctant to let black people join the war effort, the rules were relaxed as the war progressed and casualties mounted.
Enthusiasm to defend "King and Empire" was widespread across the Caribbean and Mr Brown, like thousands of others, was quick to sign up.
Back in the present day, the airwaves are humming, and it isn’t just black Britons speaking out. British radio talk show host and political commentator James O’Brian has been discussing the Windrush scandal on his show, and this monologue is a glimpse of his outrage:
This is James O'Brien's powerful criticism of Theresa May for her part in the Windrush scandal in which British citizens from the Caribbean have been deported. James was livid after hearing story after story of people who have lived in Britain for more than 40 years were being told to prove they have the right to live here. And he says Theresa May is to blame for this - but seems more keen on playing up to Donald Trump instead.
English comedian and writer Russell Kane weighed in with his take, eviscerating Amber Rudd:
Signatures are being collected on a petition to lay before Parliament.
Petition Amnesty for anyone who was a minor that arrived In Britain between 1948 to 1971
Windrush Generation were invited as settlers and as British subjects. Minors also had the right to stay.We call on the government to stop all deportations, change the burden of proof and establish an amnesty for anyone who was a minor.The government should also provide compensation for loss & hurt.
With successive changes in immigration policy and legislation over the last 70 years along with the independence of countries which now form part of the Commonwealth this has created uncertainty and lack of clarity and justice for tens of thousands of individuals who have worked hard, paid their taxes and raised children and grandchildren and who see Britain as their home.
Parliament will debate this petition on 30 April 2018.
You'll be able to watch online at parliamentlive.tv
I’ll be watching. and so will many other people in the Caribbean diaspora—quite a few of whom live here in the United States.
Here’s hoping that this episode of British Trumpism will go down in defeat. and that the Windrush Generation and their children will have a victory.
