First, the news: It has recently been announced that the problems of the Windrush generation are being addressed, with citizenship and compensation for the costs accrued when people were forced to leave the country and abandon their property.
Next, the news that explains what that news means.
The United Kingdom has a problem with immigration.
Per Migration Watch, it has risen dramatically in recent years, associative to the comprehensive benefits afforded migrants and the catastrophic violence in Syria.
Not only have refugees poured into the country, but others who simply wished to move to the comparatively wealthy have taken advantage of the lax standards to resettle in the UK. According to the U.N. (by way of the Express), that is the situation for 7 out of 10 who claim to be refugees.
Problems have followed, based on the corresponding rise in violent crime. From the BBC:
- 68,968 robbery offences, up 29%
- 138,045 sex offences, up 23%
- 37,443 knife crime offences, up 21%
- 1,291,405 violent crime offences, up 20%
Note: that is just the reported crime. Anecdotes of crime going unreported and local police being hesitant to report it are rampant, such as the Rotherham incident where rapes were said to have been ignored. (Forbes)
Rather than address the issue directly through deportations and risk the political backlash associated with targeting “refugees”, the U.K. government has decided upon a passive approach. Rules have been put into place making it an offense with thousands of pounds in fees for renting to non-citizens who don’t have paperwork to show they are legally present. More have been enacted making it costly to hire any non-citizen. New laws prohibit non-citizens from receiving free health care.
All of this seems like a reasonable, if harsh, approach to illegal immigration.
Now meet the Windrush generation.
Again, from the BBC:
This is a reference to the ship MV Empire Windrush, which arrived at Tilbury Docks, Essex, on 22 June 1948, bringing workers from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and other islands, as a response to post-war labour shortages in the UK.
The ship carried 492 passengers – many of them children.
Because they were desperate for labor, the UK brought migrants from their properties in the Caribbean. The migrants were, of course, granted citizenship in appreciation for the work they were doing on behalf of the Crown.
Their children weren’t.
The children could apply for citizenship… but there didn’t seem to be a need. They were treated as citizens; they paid all appropriate taxes and fees, they received all benefits. They could get UK passports, driver’s licenses, any other government paperwork. They did not have technical citizenship, but it was no issue.
Then the new rules were implemented. Elderly workers and retirees in Britain found themselves being thrown out of their homes when they were unable to present the needed paperwork – as well as losing jobs that had been held for decades. (h/t Guardian and Independent)
It might not have mattered, had they simply gone to get the verification paperwork to demonstrate they’d been present. But the government had already acted to prevent that:
In 2010, landing cards belonging to Windrush migrants were destroyed by the Home Office.
Amidst an effort at generating outrage for political benefit, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had an epic fail. This video is too precious not to include:
This failure belongs to ALL of the UK government, not just one political party.
Which brings us back to the news of early this week: it has recently been announced that the problems of the Windrush generation are being addressed, with citizenship and compensation for the costs accrued when people were forced to leave the country and abandon their property.
Immigration activists in the UK have used the travails of the Windrush Generation to prevent action from being taken to address the crime and fiscal problems arising from the large flood of cross-Mediterranean migrants. The controlling government of the UK has set the stage for abuse of the nearly half-million Windrush Generation children and descendants, and effectively guaranteed abuse for more than 50,000 of them under precarious circumstances.
The innocent in all of this? The people who just wanted to live their daily lives and be part of their country. But, as our contributor SodaSaint noted in the horrifying Alfie Evans case, the UK seems to have a problem with that, recently.
