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EU citizens plead: Don't treat our children like Windrush victims

EU citizens living in Britain have been left 'hugely worried': AFP/Getty Images
EU citizens living in Britain have been left 'hugely worried': AFP/Getty Images

EU citizens in Britain today said they were “hugely worried” that the Windrush fiasco could happen to their own children.

“Will our children be in the same situation in 20 or 30 years’ time?” asked Maike Bohn, a campaigner with pressure group the3million, which is pressing for stronger safeguards for 3.6 million UK residents who come from EU states.

“They are hugely worried — and what is happening to the Windrush generation is adding to their anxiety.

“These were people promised that their rights would last a lifetime. And a year before Brexit there is still no certainty about EU citizens’ eligibility and criteria to apply for their new status.”

The Government has promised life-long “settled status” to European Union citizens currently living in the UK and later arrivals who qualify, including full rights of residency and access to NHS healthcare and benefits.

Concern rocketed overnight according to Ms Bohn, after it emerged that the UK Border Agency under the Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK after the Second World War.

The Windrush generation are in the midst of a major row with the Government over having to prove to the Home Office they have the right to live in the UK despite being given indefinite leave to remain in 1973.

The landing cards listed their date of arrival, but according to the Home Office do not provide reliable evidence as to whether they stayed in the UK or their immigration status.

A Home Office source said: “So it would be misleading and inaccurate to suggest that registration slips would therefore have a bearing on immigration cases whereby Commonwealth citizens are proving residency in the UK.”

One man, Nick Broderick, said he had contemplated suicide over fears he would be deported to Jamaica, the nation he left as a baby in 1962. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he came into contact with authorities during an immigration check four years at the recruitment firm in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, where he worked.

Mr Broderick, whose older brother Andrew received a UK passport while serving in the British Army, said he sent in reports from his school and doctor and “everybody else that I could find, but it wasn’t good enough for them.”

The extraordinary decision to scrap the landing cards in October 2010 raised questions about whether then-Home Secretary Theresa May’s close aides approved or encouraged it.

Mrs May’s former special advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, were notorious for involving themselves in every significant decision made in the Home Office and drove measures designed to push down immigration.

Officials told the Standard it was an “operational decision” of the UK borders authority in October 2010, meaning it was taken by civil servants without any need for a ministerial sign-off. A Home Office source from the time said the decision is unlikely to have passed the desk of the then Immigration Minister, Damian Green. “It was probably a decision taken by civil servants, I do not think it was a ministerial decision.

“I don’t recall any Windrush case coming before ministers at the time, nor any proposal to destroy documents. It may be that they were moving stuff out of one building to another and simply said ‘let’s get rid of these old records’.”

Another source who previously worked at the Home Office said staff at the time were under immense pressure to clear the huge backlog of immigration cases. “There was a terrible backlog on applications for any immigration status. It was a mess.

“People were waiting lifetimes to hear if they had been grated status. Most of the things going on in the Home Office were cock-up though, not conspiracy.” The source said it would have been “very stupid to destroy any records that they did have”, and cast doubt on whether a minister would have known about it happening, with an official likely to have made the decision.