Sajid Javid must stop applying “good character” tests to Windrush victims. As Nesrine Malik says (Clearly no lessons have been learned from Windrush, 2 October), such a test cannot be applied to British citizens, so this makes Windrush victims second-class citizens. They deserve full citizenship with no further “tests”. If they’re “bad characters” then, like any British citizen, they’ll be subject to social and legal sanctions, and if they’ve committed a criminal offence, they’ll have served their sentence and should suffer no further government-imposed penalty. After the horrific suffering imposed on Windrush victims by government failures, this extrajudicial judgment is just twisting the knife.
Chris Hughes
Leicester
• What a brilliant idea (Javid defends plans for stricter citizenship rules after Brexit, 3 October)! In the medium to long term, all the low-skilled jobs will be done by the British-born, all the high-skilled jobs will be done by foreigners who don’t have to speak English and who will have been trained and educated abroad. We can abolish education and skills training in this country. The national debt will disappear in an instant and we can reduce taxation to approaching zero. Who claimed that the Conservatives weren’t clever?
Tom Swallow
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
• Whenever British farmers talk about EU migrant workers such as those who pick many UK crops, they often talk of how skilled the work actually is – as well as backbreaking. So when Tories talk about “low-skilled” workers, isn’t that really a sneering way of saying “low-status”? By contrast, being a Tory MP seems pretty low-skilled – unless dodging hard questions and awkward facts counts as a skill.
Norman Miller
Brighton
• The case of Taniella and Nesta Moustache, who have been told they will be deported to the Seychelles, which is not even their ancestral home, is utterly shameful (Report, 3 October). At 18, Taniella is barely into adulthood, while her 16-year-old sister is also threatened with deportation in two years’ time. These young people have no family or friends in the Seychelles, and would be cast adrift in a strange country with no means of support.
The UK policy that gives British citizenship to two generations but withholds it from the third is staggering. Quite apart from the suffering that the policy creates, the lack of logic is astounding. If we do not want to be seen as a country that abandons young people and breaks up families, we should use this case as an opportunity to change a huge injustice.
Catherine Rose
Olney, Buckinghamshire
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