Windrush, asylum seekers and the UK

The causes of the Windrush scandal remain to be fully recognised, let alone addressed (A year on, Home Office is still failing Windrush citizens, 16 April). The Windrush generation were failed by decades of harmful government policy and practice that effectively deprived people of their rightful citizenship and unleashed a range of harmful immigration powers against them.

Today, systemic injustice and racism in the UK’s nationality and immigration systems continue to destroy the lives of many people, including British citizens. Among them are the thousands of children, many born in the UK, who are denied their rights to British citizenship because of a profit-making fee they cannot afford (Report, 5 April).

The Home Office’s persistent denial of its own dysfunctionality is an insult to the Windrush generation and others who continue to be harmed by this country’s immigration system.

There needs to be fundamental reform at the Home Office, which needs to start respecting people’s rights.

Until the government takes responsibility and addresses the root of the problem, people’s lives will continue to be devastated, just as happened to the Windrush generation.
Steve Valdez-Symonds
Refugee and migrant rights director, Amnesty International UK

• Your article on the plight of asylum seekers being turned out on the streets in Glasgow (Scots ruling denies housing rights to ‘whole group’, says refugee body, 13 April) highlights the issues well. However, it does not touch on one of the roots of the problem – asylum seekers are given just 28 days from getting a decision on their case to leave their accommodation. Those who have a positive decision only have that time to find a job or claim benefits as well. Those with a negative decision need time to sort out their future. There is an important and urgent case for increasing the 28 days to 60 to give people a better chance and, for those trying to help them, to react in time.
Suzanne Fletcher
Stockton-on-Tees

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition