124 Indians Get UK Citizenship Under Windrush Scheme

The United Kingdom has granted citizenship to 124 Indians under the government’s Windrush Scheme. Thirty two other Indians have been given Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the country, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said in an update to the Home Affairs Select Committee on Sept. 21.

The status of 2,277 people has been regularized, who originally belong to Jamaica, Barbados, India, Grenada, Trinidad & Tobago, among other countries. Some of them were granted citizenship of the United Kingdom while others have been granted No Time Limit (NLT)/Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the country. 

The UK government’s move came following uproar over its plans to deport people or descendants of the “Windrush generation,” citizens of the Commonwealth countries who arrived in Britain as laborers after the Second World War, between 1948 and 1973. 

The official communication showed that the status of 156 Indians caught in the Windrush controversy has been regularized.  

The Windrush task force will also begin the process of refusing cases which have been found uneligible for documentation or citizenship through the scheme, Javid said, according to a government statement.

Javid wrote in an update to the committee: “I continue to believe it is important that we take a cross party-approach which recognizes the most important thing we can do is ensure the wrongs which some members of the Windrush generation have faced are put right.” 

He added: “I look forward to further engagement with the Home Affairs Select Committee in that spirit. In the meantime, I can reassure members that my department is entirely focused on righting the wrongs experienced by the Windrush generation.” 

Javid also said that consultation on a Windrush Compensation Scheme is underway. 

“The compensation scheme will build on the measures already introduced by the government to right the wrongs experienced by members of the Windrush generation,” the UK government says on its website. 

About 500,000 people living in the United Kingdom were born in a Commonwealth country and came to Britain before 1971, according to estimates by the Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, BBC reported. These numbers include the number of Windrush arrivals. 

The UK government constituted a task force in May this year to look into the matter of residency status of people of the Windrush generation, after a controversy erupted in April over their possible deportation due to lack of proper documents.