UK: Caribbean Diplomats Urge Empathy After Citizens Detained

Diplomats from several Caribbean countries have urged the United Kingdom immigration service, known as the Home Office, to adopt a “more compassionate” approach towards retirement-age Commonwealth citizens. The request comes amid the possibility of thousands of people facing deportation as a result of emigrating to the United Kingdom decades ago without formally naturalizing their status.

RELATED: 
Grenada: 45 Candidates Register for Parliamentary Elections

Their unresolved residency status, according to Guy Hewitt, the Barbados high commissioner in London, may hinder their chances of accessing housing, pensions, healthcare and work.

This week, Anthony Byron, a 60-year-old grandfather who has lived in the United Kingdom for 52 years, was released after spending five weeks in immigration detention centers. It had taken immigration officials over a month to determine that he was, in fact, “lawfully present in the UK.”

Byron, who left Jamaica in 1965 when he was eight years old, has lived in the United Kingdom ever since. Unable to prove that he was not an “illegal worker,” the decorator lost his job in 2015 and encountered great difficulty in convincing the Home Office of his right to be in the United Kingdom, according to The Guardian.

“I told them I was eight years old when I arrived here, but nobody believed; they told me I was an illegal immigrant and a criminal. They locked me up unlawfully. It was very stressful. It has been a nightmare,” he said.

In another case, Paulette Wilson, a grandmother who made her life and worked in the United Kingdom for 51 years, was suddenly deemed an illegal immigrant by the Home Office, detained and threatened with forced removal to Jamaica, according to The Guardian.

Hewitt has described the difficulties faced by his compatriots and others from former Commonwealth Caribbean countries as tragic.

“This is affecting people who came and gave a lifetime of service at a time when the U.K. was calling for workers and migrants, they came because they were encouraged to come here to help build post-World War II Britain and build it into the multicultural place that it is now. These are not people who tried to take advantage of the system. We need to find a compassionate mechanism for resolving this,” he said.

The high commissioner emphasized that elderly residents are most vulnerable. “It is really for many a very traumatic process. Often, the family and friends who could vouch for them are dead.

Seth George Ramocan, the Jamaican high commissioner to London, shared Hewitt's opinions. “In this system, one is guilty before proven innocent rather than the other way around.”

In 1962 the United Kingdom imposed strict controls on those entering the country from Commonwealth territories.