A new commissioner will be hired by Britain and mandated to look into offering compensation to Caribbean migrants that the British authorities wrongly detained and deported, the interior ministry announced on Thursday.
Per Reuters, the commissioner will also be tasked to help prevent the repetition of a scandal of such nature. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants states that the Windrush scandal “began to surface in 2017 after it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth citizens, many of whom were from the ‘Windrush’ generation, had been wrongly detained, deported and denied legal rights.”
The organization also said there was “widespread shock and outrage at the fact that so many Black Britons had had their lives devastated by Britain’s deeply flawed and discriminatory immigration system.”
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Britain ultimately rendered an apology in 2018. As previously reported by Face2Face Africa, the Windrush generation came to the UK to serve as a buffer for the loss of life during World War II. The British Nationality Act 1948 offered British citizenship to all individuals living in the UK and its colonies.
The 1971 Immigration Act gave citizens of the Windrush generation permission to stay in the UK indefinitely. Descendants were granted the right to emigrate to the UK as long as they acquired a work permit and could prove a parent or grandparent was born in the UK.
READ ALSO: The economic immigrants from the Caribbean whom the UK refused to offer citizenship for over 50 years
The government said the Windrush Commissioner will serve as an independent representative for the victims and also offer the government guidance on how to go about compensation for affected individuals, authorities said.
Migration and Citizenship minister Seema Malhotra said the commissioner will execute “crucial work to ensure that such an injustice can never happen again and that dignity is restored to those who have suffered,” Reuters reported.
“Upon appointment, the commissioner will work alongside the Windrush Unit, which was re-established by the Home Secretary, to oversee the department’s response to the scandal and embed permanent cultural change,” the government explained.
