The Home Office’s treatment of Anthony Bryan (On notice to be deported after lifetime in Britain, 2 December) and many other vulnerable long-term residents in the UK is shameful, but it is not limited to the disadvantaged. I am white, middle class, and have lived in the UK for all of my adult life. I am privileged in every way apart from having been born in the US.
In 1996 I was granted a certificate of naturalisation on the grounds that I had been married to an Englishman for 30 years. And yet when I tried to renew my British passport in November 2016 I was refused on the grounds that the name on my American passport is Sheila Haynes Hale, while my expiring British passport has just Sheila Hale. I was told that to qualify for a renewed UK passport I must prove my identity with a recent utility bill or bank statement showing the name Sheila Haynes Hale. Since I had not used my full name in this country for many decades this proved impossible. The bank wouldn’t change my name without a utility bill and vice versa. I returned to the passport office with my certificate of naturalisation and my will, drawn up by a solicitor who had insisted that it should carry all three names. Again I was refused the renewal: it must be a utility bill or a bank statement. The certificate of naturalisation was apparently no longer valid.
On my third visit to the passport office I appended a note to the documentation saying that the reason I did not use a middle name in this country was that my husband had been knighted in 1984. Since it was his title, not mine, I could not, according to the custom of this country, be “Lady Haynes Hale”. I was on my way home when I received a text: “Dear Lady Hale, your passport will be sent by special delivery within the next few days.” It arrived the following morning.
Sheila Hale
Twickenham
• Congratulations for your reporting on the rising numbers of innocent people being persecuted by the Home Office. As the numbers involved cannot contribute hugely to the stupid immigration targets, this must be interpreted as a dog whistle. Is there a Home Office team going through everyone who came here before 1971 in case they have lost their records so they can be arbitrarily be thrown out?
I have a Ugandan Asian friend, by the way, who says he no longer swims in the sea in case they won’t let him back in.
David Quinn
London
• My heart goes out to the Jamaicans and others who have lived in the UK legally since they were children in the 1960s, now being threatened with deportation by our bigoted government. There but for the grace of (my being American and white).
I arrived in 1967 to marry a Brit. Americans didn’t recognise dual citizenship, so I opted for “indefinite leave to remain” instead of taking British nationality. The US recognised dual nationality years ago, but I only got round to applying for naturalisation recently after I realised it wasn’t sensible to trust this government one inch. What if I protested against fracking, was arrested and got a criminal record? Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan resident with a British partner and children, was deported for a similar reason – and died on the plane after being restrained by security guards in 2010. Now it seems that even a clear record isn’t enough. The government should regularise these blameless people who came as children to the UK – not terrorise them, put them in detention and deport them. This government’s hostile attitude is monstrous. I was granted British citizenship with no difficulty. I am not proud to feel ashamed of both my “mother” countries.
Mary Ann Hooper
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
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