Double the number of Bangladeshis, one of the nationalities affected in the UK’s Windrush immigration scandal, continue to make contact with a taskforce to confirm their British citizenship under a UK government scheme.
According to the latest update by UK home secretary Sajid Javid on Monday, a total of 44 Bangladeshis have been able to confirm their status in the wake of the scandal involving Commonwealth nationals wrongly denied their citizenship rights in Britain. A majority of them (18) had arrived in the UK before 1973, when the immigration rules had changed, while the others either arrived later or were a family member of the so-called “Windrush generation”. The figure has increased by 23 in the last update on the issue earlier this year.
“I have personally apologised to those identified through this review and I will make sure they receive support and access to the compensation scheme,” said Javid, a senior Pakistani-origin minister who took charge of the UK Home Office as a result of the scandal last year.
“I have been very clear that the experiences of some members of the Windrush generation has been completely unacceptable, which is why I am committed to right the wrongs of successive governments,” he said.
The Windrush generation refers to citizens of former British colonies who arrived before 1973, when the rights of such Commonwealth citizens to live and work in Britain were substantially curtailed. While a large proportion of them were of Jamaican/Caribbean descent who came on the ship Windrush, Bangladeshis and other South Asians were also affected by the UK government’s handling of their immigration status.
The UK Home Office had set up a Windrush Taskforce in April 2018 to deal with a backlog of thousands of such cases, with Javid providing regular updates to the Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee Chair, Yvette Cooper, on the progress of the scheme. In his latest update this week, the minister confirmed that as of the end of April 30 this year, 6,470 individuals have been granted some form of documentation by the Taskforce. He also revealed that he has written 46 letters to people, mainly of Caribbean origin, who were wrongly sanctioned under policies aimed at illegal immigrants.
“To right the wrongs experienced by the Windrush generation, the Home Office established the Commonwealth Citizen Taskforce which is open to all nationalities, as is the compensation scheme which opened in April 2019,” a Home Office statement said.