UK accused of abandoning African immigrants

Campaigners have slammed the UK Home Office after it emerged that 49 people deported to Ghana and Nigeria have not been contacted by the Windrush task force. The Windrush scandal occurred earlier this year after many people from Commonwealth countries who had legally lived in Britain for decades were wrongly classed as illegal immigrants and deported. BBC News reports that they had been encouraged by the UK Government to settle in Britain from the late 1940s until 1973. However, many immigrants did not have formal paperwork confirming their residency status. As a result, when the Home Office embarked on its so-called ‘hostile environment’ policy designed to make staying in the UK more difficult, some immigrants were illegally deported. Their problems were compounded by a 2010 decision to destroy their landing cards – often the only record of their immigration status. Satbir Singh, CEO of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said if the office has the capacity to separate immigrants from the country, ‘surely it has the capacity to find them, to apologise and to help them come home’.