Immigrants: Caribbean

(asked on )

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many children of Windrush generation migrants have been (a) detained in immigration detention centres, (b) denied access to healthcare, (c) denied access to benefits and (d) stripped of their right to work in each of the last eight years.


Answered by
Caroline Nokes Portrait
Caroline Nokes
This question was answered on 6th September 2018

The department has been reviewing the cases of all Caribbean Commonwealth nationals, born before 1 January 1973, who have been removed and/or detained by the Home Office since 2002 (when the Casework Information Database (CID) was available across the immigration system) to identify any individuals where there was an indication in the record that the individual could have been in the UK before 1973.

The Home Secretary wrote to the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee on 21 August to provide an update on this work. Letters of apology are being sent from the Home Secretary to the eighteen individuals who we consider are most likely to have suffered detriment because their right to be in the UK was not recognised and where the Department is most likely to have acted wrongfully in removing and / or detaining them. A copy of this letter has been deposited in the House Library.

This work is ongoing and the Home Secretary committed to regularly updating the Home Affairs Select Committee on this work, as well as the review into proactive compliant environment sanctions.

Children of the Windrush generation who were born in the United Kingdom will generally consider themselves to be British. However, in some cases they may need a document to confirm that status. Others will have the right to register as British. This is being facilitated through the Windrush taskforce. Additionally, any child of a member of the Windrush generation who was born abroad and who came to live in the UK before they were 18 and has been continuously resident and meets the good character requirements may apply to obtain citizenship.

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