Amelia Gentleman is to be thanked again for her sterling work on Windrush (Windrush report: call for inquiry into extent of racism in Home Office, 19 March). Immigration advisers knew immediately when the policy was announced that the consequences would be dire. It must have been equally obvious to those who designed the policy at the Home Office. There should have been a six-month period to apply to confirm their status, without immediately being deemed illegal.
Yet we are heading for the same problem with long-term EEA citizen residents, especially those married to British citizens. If they don’t apply for settled status by 30 June 2021 they will be illegal, with no grace period once this is discovered. This has been pointed out by the Home Office and others. While they have an interest in forcing people to apply, will they soften as the deadline approaches? We cannot be confident.
Clive Vinall
Reading
• Praise and more praise to the Guardian and the wonderful Amelia Gentleman for producing the double page of portraits and brief histories of victims of the Windrush horror while all attention is focused on the Covid-19 epidemic (‘Lambs to the slaughter’: 50 lives ruined by the Windrush scandal, 19 March). I thought I had some understanding of what people had suffered, but found I knew nothing. I am sending a copy to my MP.
Frances Heywood
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• I read with fascination and horror your centre spread covering the fates of some of the victims of the Windrush scandal. Feelings of impotent rage at the injustice perpetrated by “our” government are an obvious but not very helpful reaction; is there a legal fighting fund to which we might usefully contribute in order to do something, however small and belated – and sadly in some cases irreversibly too late – to help right this in some small way?
Richard Barnes
Chesham, Buckinghamshire
• Your stories of people affected by the Windrush scandal were immensely upsetting, both in terms of the individual human tragedies and the horrendously inhumane treatment meted out by the Home Office, benefits system and others.
Boris Johnson’s self-proclaimed people’s government should now do “whatever it takes” to “level things up” for the victims by urgently publishing Wendy Williams’s report in full; issuing unequivocal apologies to everyone affected; offering generous damages compensation; and refunding every penny of tax and national insurance that these citizens have paid over the last 50 years or so. Anything less would be a derogation of responsibility.
David Amess
Pershore, Worcestershire
• This campaign to highlight the injustice done to the Windrush generation is a great piece of journalism, and the stories described in Amelia Gentleman’s book are hard to read without feeling overwhelmed by the pain of what people experienced.
However, this is not the only arena where the Home Office’s “hostile environment” is operating. A friend of mine who fled the war in Sierra Leone in 2002 was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in 2010.
Since then he has achieved a first-class honours degree in social science and a master’s. Now, because he has found it difficult to access employment, he is studying again, through much of this time supporting himself by doing factory work.
He applied for British citizenship almost two years ago, passed the test and paid the fee and still has no passport and no citizenship decision from the Home Office. He has committed no crime and supported himself financially.
Why do we so easily dismiss someone like this who has worked to make a contribution? How can people feel they belong, when they are so clearly made to feel that they do not?
Gill Martin
York
