UK’s Windrush scandal may singe pre-’71 Indian migrants
London, April 30
Indians who migrated to the UK as Commonwealth citizens before 1971 are estimated as the second-largest nationality after Jamaicans, the group caught up in the ongoing Windrush scandal that has shaken up the UK government in recent weeks.
The scandal resulted in Home Secretary Amber Rudd being forced to resign early Monday morning. The issue centres around thousands of UK-based Jamaicans facing forced deportations due to lack of documentary evidence that they had the right to live and work in Britain because they arrived pre-1973, when stricter new visa norms came into force for all Commonwealth nationals.
No specific cases of Indians from that era facing unfair deportations have emerged so far but as many as 13,000 Indian nationals are estimated to fall within that criteria of migrants, according to the UK’s Migration Observatory based at University of Oxford.
“The Windrush generation refers to citizens of former British colonies who arrived before 1973, when the rights of such Commonwealth citizens to live and work in Britain were substantially curtailed,” said Rob McNeil, Deputy Director of the Migration Observatory. — PTI
