Windrush and the “good immigrants” tale
A few months back, when the Windrush scandal first broke thanks to The Guardian’s investigation, I wrote a piece in Italian about it.
Windrush received little coverage in Italy: unsurprisingly, perhaps, migration is only interesting when it’s on our doorstep. This case, however, left a deep impression on me.
The human impact was appalling. Targeting people who had been living in the UK for decades and expecting them to go back to a country they had hardly ever known shows how inhumane and ill-informed (and yes, xenophobic) a bureaucratic system can be.
The government’s botched response was concerning. The cabinet first rejected all allegations; then it partly retracted, admitting there had been mismanagement. Finally, faced with the undeniable facts and the testimonies of dozens of Windrush immigrants, it was forced to do something. Even then, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who resigned shortly thereafter) and Prime Minister Theresa May guaranteed no people had been deported.
In the following weeks, after the Windrush Scheme was launched, it became apparent that some people have indeed been removed from the country in the past years.
What we know now
This table caught my attention. Of the 42 people with whom the Home Office is currently in touch, only one of them will not be applying for the Windrush Scheme. Despite the injustice they suffered, these people still want to go back to their country. They want to go back to their families, their homes, their towns, their lives.
I want to stress this point because it’s crucial. The majority of people who are eligible under the Windrush Scheme came to the UK before 1973. This is their country. Even after all they’ve been through, they still wish to apply for ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain)/NTL (No Time Limit) settled status.
The problem with “good immigrants”
One thing I found particularly disturbing: the widespread good immigrant rhetoric some have used to defend the victims of the Windrush scandal. Citizenship and settled status become a matter of morality, rather than a matter of law. Many of these people left their countries when they were still British colonies. Under British law, they had the right to settle in the UK.
Surely people from Commonwealth countries helped rebuilt the country afte the Second World War (hint: the 1948 Nationality Act, following which until 1971 almost 500,000 people from the Commonwealth arrived in the UK, was not an act of kindness). They have contributed a lot to the British economy, society, and culture. They still do. But recognising their rights is not a reward for this contribution (which, in many ways, carries with it a heavy and troubling historical legacy). It is a provision enshrined in law.
One may argue that the rhetoric used is secondary, as long as their rights are upheld. It isn’t. Shifting the focus away from the law conceals the extent and gravity of what has happened. The British government chose to pursue a hostile environment approach to immigration. Its migration policy has been driven by numbers and annual thresholds, rather than by rational and informed assessments.
The latest government reports tells a story in numbers. The “83 people deported, 11 of them dead” makes a good headline. Let’s not forget about all those people who stayed in the UK, but lost their jobs, their homes, their right to healthcare because of a short-sighted policy that only cared about immigration targets, and not about the people behind numbers.
When the House of Commons held the first emergency debate on the Windrush scandal, Labour MP David Lammy called it “a day of national shame”. I wish a day was enough to acknowledge the systemic inequalities and discrimination behind this story.
The victims of the Windrush scandal came from British colonies. We could infer that a majority of them were not white. The scandal emerged right before the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in April 2018. Initially, the Prime Minister refused to meet representatives from Caribbean countries for an emergency briefing on the issue. Would the same have happened if other countries had been involved?
To me, this case shows the cracks in the discourse of “Commonwealth solidarity”. Has the country fully come to terms with the historical legacy of the empire? How is the role of Commonwealth countries perceived in UK politics and society? Are their contribution and their sacrifice adequately acknowledged?
