Thread by @JolyonMaugham

🚨@WindrushLives Thread🚨

Let’s interrogate what reparation for the #WindrushInjustice ought to look like.

Strategically, we are committed to improving the existing Scheme ASAP and taking it away from the HO so that claimants can get the compensation they are owed. [1/20]

But that word - ‘owed’ - is an important one here. The injustice done to the Windrush generation and their families is about more than material losses from loss of employment, for example, although that is of course a big part of the harm done. [2/20]

It is also about the stripping of citizenship and the rights that come with it, and deprivation of dignity, identity and a sense of belonging. [3/20]

Imagine if, when the hostile environment locks you into a spiral of bureaucratic violence, a small thing like getting an email from HR, trying to renew your passport, or visiting family abroad changes your life forever. [4/20]

Imagine feeling like everything you had built up - your family, your job, your future - was threatened because, somehow, impossibly, suddenly, you are being told you are not British despite being born here or growing up here or spending most of your life here. [5/20]

Imagine being made homeless, jobless, even stateless by and because of @ukhomeoffice.

And then having to fill out a long, complex form proving *to that same Home Office* that all of this had an impact on your life, needing to evidence every detail, more than once. [6/20]

Because somehow, while all this is happening to you, you were supposed to hold onto receipts or ask the person who refused you a job years ago to please put their reasons in writing. Everyone would prioritise keeping their files in order when being made homeless right? [7/20]

Imagine the frustration of being unable to show evidence of the job you know you could have got if you had had the right status, the essential contradiction of evidencing what could have been but was made impossible. [8/20]

Imagine having to wait and wait and wait for any sign of justice and receiving none. The traumatic impact of this - not just the direct impacts of deportation, stigma, social isolation, health effects, economic suffering and financial insecurity…[9/20]

...but the long-term and intergenerational trauma that comes from watching a parent’s mental health deteriorate or their life fall apart, the lingering insecurity and fear that it could all happen again; [10/20]

the retraumatizing effect of waiting without closure, without being able to move on; of being gaslit and patronised by the people assigned to help you; of feeling like you are being asked to plead for what is rightfully yours. [11/20]

The Windrush campaigner and activist Patrick Vernon @ppvernon writes: ‘Survivors of the scandal say they feel the government robbed them of their black British identities, and made them feel like aliens and non-entities… [12/20]

...This hurt and trauma is felt by many people of colour and migration status as we constantly deal with microaggressions and everyday racism, which have an impact on our mental wellbeing.’ @ppvernon [13/20] theguardian.com/society/2019/o…

A serious injustice was done to UK citizens and residents by the UK government through demonstrably racist policies implemented by an institutionally racist arm of the government - the Home Office. [14/20]

It is an injustice that has ruined thousands of lives and shown Black and Brown people in this country that their Britishness is contingent and can be snatched away in a heartbeat. [15/20] @WindrushLives

What should reparation for such an injustice look like?

At the VERY LEAST it should involve an independent body managing the Scheme, properly funded legal aid, fair and generous compensation; [16/20]

Much faster expedition of cases (and none of these ‘it takes time to understand the individual circumstances of each case’ platitudes that we hear from the HO - hire more people and train them better then!); [17/20]

A properly funded team to help with vulnerable claimants who need more than just money as a result of the circumstances the HO put them in, MUCH better data on claims and pay-outs, and exit surveys to hear how claimants have found the process (currently not a thing). [18/20]

But above and in addition to all that, claimants require and are owed a proper individual apology to go with their compensation. [19/20]

And to see the policies, laws, and procedures that put them in this situation dismantled.

In other words, they need to see the end of the hostile environment. #WindrushInjustice #BreakTheHE @WindrushLives [20/20]