Over 2,000 people, including Indians, have been given documents confirming their residency status in the United Kingdom, Home Secretary Sajid Javid revealed on July 11. Almost 600 people have been granted British citizenship under a scheme that was established following the Windrush generation scandal, the Times reported.
Among the people who were issued documentation by the Home Office, confirming their right to stay in the United Kingdom, are 93 persons born in India, the Guardian reported. As many as 2,125 people who contacted the Windrush hotline were given the confirmation, of which 1,014 were born in Jamaica, 207 in Barbados, 88 in Grenada, and 85 in Trinidad and Tobago, while 638 people were from other countries, the report added.
In a letter to the home affairs select committee, Javid said that 584 people were granted citizenship in June through the Windrush scheme, which came into effect in May.
The UK government has also halted many hostile policies so that more people who have lived in the country for over 30 years are not “erroneously impacted by compliant environment measures,” Javid said, according to the publication. Among the measures taken is a pause on the “pro-active data sharing” between different government departments in a bid to prevent the Windrush generation from getting wrongly caught in steps being taken to curb illegal immigration.
The Windrush generation comprises people from the Commonwealth countries, mainly the Caribbean, who came to the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1973. The first group of immigrants came aboard the ship MV Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on June 22, 1948, bringing workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other islands, to meet the post-war labor shortage in the United Kingdom. Since thousands of them reached the country as children travelling on parents’ passports, they did not have travel documents.
The Home Office did not keep a record of the members of the Windrush generation who were granted leave to remain nor did it issue any documents to confirm their status in the country. It also destroyed their landing cards in 2010.
Many of these immigrants started facing deportation after the government tightened immigration policies. The ensuing controversy led to the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd, and Prime Minister Theresa May’s apology in April this year. Those who came to the country legally after the World War-II could stay indefinitely, May said at the time.
“We have made absolutely clear that the Windrush generation have a right to be here, they are British, they are part of us — the problem at the time was they were not documented with that right, and we are putting that right,” May was quoted as saying in a previous report by the Sun.
The citizenship scheme was extended to anyone from a Commonwealth nation who settled in the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1973 .
The Home Office had earlier suspended immigration checks on thousands of bank accounts in the wake of the Windrush controversy.