All Articles: Windrush

Soul-searching in a large bureaucracy often manifests in well-meaning paperwork. So it is that the Home Office has published an ethical decision-making model. The document is intended to help staff grappling with difficult moral choices in the course ...

We covered the nationality portion of the New Plan for Immigration in an earlier article. Many of those proposals, largely concerning British Overseas Territories citizens and the Windrush generation, were notably less cruel and unusual than the other ...

In this edition of “have I got immigration news for you”, we look at the case of Mahabir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 1177 (Admin), in which the High Court found that the Home Office had caused a “colossal interferenc ...

The New Plan for Immigration Policy Statement of March 2021 (the New Plan) contains proposals to make significant changes to immigration and nationality law and policy. This article addresses the proposals set out in Chapter 3, which concern changes t ...

From ‘Citizens of the UK and Colonies’, to ‘Commonwealth Citizens’, to ‘subject to immigration control’: the legislative erosion of the Windrush generation’s British citizenship rights is laid bare at paragrap ...

The legal powers of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have been much discussed in recent weeks. This month it is not the Labour Party in the figurative dock, but the more familiar presence of the Home Office. An EHRC report into the Wind ...

For many of the Windrush generation it was the hostile environment which signalled the start of their wrongful exclusion from society and, in some cases, the UK itself. For others, the injustice started much earlier. Between 1973 and 1988, many Common ...

Home Secretary Priti Patel has proposed nothing less than a revolution within the Home Office in response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review by Wendy Williams. In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, which should be read in full, Patel o ...

Recommendation 6 – The Home Office should: a) devise, implement and review a comprehensive learning and development programme which makes sure all its existing and new staff learn about the history of the UK and its relationship with the rest of the ...

What caused the Windrush scandal? According to an independent review by Wendy Williams, published today, the answer lies in increasingly harsh immigration and nationality legislation over the past 60 years. These laws — including those dedicated ...

Amelia Gentleman will be familiar to Free Movement readers as the Guardian journalist who exposed what has become known as the Windrush scandal. Her account of what happened, how the scandal developed and why the Windrush generation experienced the pr ...

Last week the Home Office announced the establishment of its compensation scheme for those affected by the Windrush scandal (the Scheme). We have published a briefing on how the Scheme will work, who is entitled to compensation, and the key documents ...

Almost a year after it first broke, the Home Office has opened a compensation scheme for those affected by the Windrush scandal (the Scheme). It expects to pay out up to £310 million to victims. We provide in this post a brief outline of how the Sche ...

I’ve been working on a submission to the Windrush lessons learned review. The final date for submission of evidence is 19 October 2018 and I’d urge anyone interested in immigration policy to consider putting in a response, no matter how sh ...

Immigration lawyers are among the groups being asked by the Home Office to submit evidence about what caused the Windrush scandal and what would prevent a repeat. In a “lessons learned” call for evidence issued on 20 August, the departm ...

For members of the Windrush generation or others with a right to be in the UK but no documents to conclusively prove that, the government’s “hostile environment” policy has vastly upped the stakes. But at the heart of many of the problems faced ...

The Home Office has announced a formal application process for victims of the Windrush scandal and other long-term residents to get documents proving their right to live in the UK. The “Windrush Scheme” will go live on 30 May, replacing a ...

Like Commonwealth citizens unable to pay for residence cards, children entitled to register for British citizenship are prevented from taking up their rightful status in the UK by swingeing Home Office fees, write Solange Valdez-Symonds and Steve Vald ...

As explained in our detailed piece on the plight of long-resident Commonwealth citizens, free legal advice used to be available for those making immigration applications. Before it was scrapped in April 2013, this legal help was available to the ̶ ...

Several cases have come to light in recent weeks and months of the treatment of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Unable to provide evidence of their right to reside in the UK, these legal immigrants are losing jobs, ...