Opinion

Claire Simpson: British citizenship was the right and due of Windrush immigrants

Britain's prime minister Theresa May hosts a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, foreign ministers and high commissioners in relation to the Windrush generation, at 10 Downing Street, London, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Picture by Daniel Leal-Olivas, Press Association
Britain's prime minister Theresa May hosts a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, foreign ministers and high commissioners in relation to the Windrush generation, at 10 Downing Street, London, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Mee Britain's prime minister Theresa May hosts a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, foreign ministers and high commissioners in relation to the Windrush generation, at 10 Downing Street, London, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. Picture by Daniel Leal-Olivas, Press Association

"Home", the American poet Robert Frost wrote, "is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in".

In Frost’s long poem The Death of the Hired Man, a woman called Mary and her farmer husband Warren argue about the return of a former worker, Silas, who previously left them in the lurch.

Warren struggles with the idea of having to take Silas in again and wonders why he does not go to his rich brother who lives nearby. But Mary has a more even approach and says home is: “Something you somehow haven’t to deserve”.

For the immigrants of the Windrush generation, their British citizenship should not be something they have to deserve - it is their right and due, based on promises made decades ago by successive governments desperate to rebuild after the Second World War.

To those thousands of people who travelled across the Atlantic, they weren’t leaving home, but rather coming to it. The colonial education system presented Britain as the benevolent mother of a huge empire who bestowed her protection on millions of people. Windrush immigrants did not become British, they were British already.

While the experience of many Caribbean immigrants wasn’t initially positive, with most encountering widespread racism and suspicion, they somehow managed to forge lives for themselves. That first wave of immigration after the war changed Britain hugely and, despite what little Englanders and Brexiteers might argue, overwhelmingly for the better.

Yet Home Office targets are not interested in the idea of home or national identity. They don’t care whether someone has lived in Britain for fifty years or five months. If a person cannot provide the huge volumes of paperwork required then they are deemed illegal and are in danger of deportation.

Arthur Snell, a former British high commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago, has spoken of his alarm that his baby son was denied a British passport in 2011, simply for being born abroad.

Mr Snell stressed that while his experience was minor compared to the distress felt by many Windrush immigrants he still felt “powerless and nervous in spite of my privileged position”.

He suggested that the immigration system depersonalises applicants and is skewed towards refusal.

“Any individual could have looked at my case in about 30 seconds and have concluded what needed to be done,” he said.

“But, instead, it is almost as if the computer says no.''

He added: “A system that does that falls hardest on the people with fewer resources, fewer networks, fewer connections”.

The ‘computer says no’ syndrome has also infected our benefits system. The disastrous roll-out of universal credit has reportedly left some claimants feeling suicidal.

One caseworker told The Independent last year that workers were hamstrung by guidelines that were unnecessarily strict and did not allow the flexibility needed to prevent families from going hungry.

In the north, nationalist MLAs have long fought for the right of people claiming disability benefit to have their application interviews recorded.

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which replaces the old Disability Living Allowance, has already been criticised by claimants in England. A review of PIP found "inherent distrust" of the system, with around 65 per cent of disputed assessments overturned on appeal. The review recommended that assessors should record meetings with claimants.

Yet in a preposterous statement earlier this year, the north’s Department for Communities said claimants would have to buy their own devices “restricted to CD and audio cassette only” to record meetings. It is hoped that now the British Department for Work and Pensions in Britain has agreed to make recording assessments for PIP a standard part of the application process, the north will follow suit.

A depersonalised benefits and immigration system treats the people it deals with as an inconvenience to be dispatched as quickly and easily as possible. Immigrants or claimants with lengthy or complex cases often get stuck in the system or their claims are rejected because outsourced workers do not have the time to investigate - nor are there any incentives for them to do so. Far better to concentrate on the number of deportations than question the humans behind those statistics.

A system with rigid guidelines is a failed system and ultimately does harm to those least able to challenge it.

When it comes to people's rights as citizens and taxpayers, a little flexibility goes a long way. Dignity and respect from the state are two things “you somehow haven’t to deserve”.