The Windrush Generation and The Deportation Scheme

By Tabby

The windrush generation is most commonly known as the generation of people who immigrated from the Caribbean to the UK between 1948 and 1971 to help fill jobs due to Britain’s post-war shortage. This number reached nearly 500,000. Encompassing men, women and children who, since the Caribbean was considered part of the Commonwealth, never had to go through the immigration process as they were free to work and permanently live in the UK.

While the Windrush scandal gained real traction during 2018 as the stories of how the children on the boats carrying the Windrush generation were being wrongly detained, denied their legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases, being wrongfully deported by the UK Home Office. The scandal started much earlier in 1971 due to the enacting of the Immigration Act. This Act restricted immigration, especially primary immigration into the UK and introduced the concepts of partriality and abode allowing it to control immigration and limit people who were coming into the country from the commonwealth countries. While this was only the start, it became detrimental for the children of the Windrush generation, as in 2012 the Home Office enacted a hostile environment policy which aimed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain, in the hope that they would “voluntarily leave”.

The Home Office stated that in order to prove that they were UK citizens they would have to provide proof that their residency predated 1973. One official document for every year of their residency created an impossible burden for many people since the Home office had destroyed the majority of landing cards, among other records. This meant that many were falsely deemed ‘illegal immigrants’ or ‘undocumented migrants’ and began to lose their access to housing, healthcare, bank accounts and driving licences. They were then placed in immigration detention, prevented from travelling abroad and threatened with forcible removal, while others were deported to countries they hadn’t seen since they were children. This has led to at least 11 reported deaths because of their deportation, including that the country’s inhabitants didn’t trust them or thought they were criminals and thus wouldn’t employ them, leading to starvation and some committing suicide.

While many have accepted the UK’s offer to return, many refuse to accept their apologies as the Home Office refuse to accept that they are at fault for this error. The Home Office also produced an action plan that they believed would compensate the deportees and those wrongly detained but a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee published in November 2021 shows that only 5.8% of those eligible for compensation have been granted it. Since the plan was announced 23 people have died leading to the suspicion that the Home office is waiting for many of these people to die so that they do not have to pay nor admit their fault.