Winston Jones, 62, was evicted while having surgery and denied a hostel place because he had no proof of UK arrival at 16

Winston Jones was admitted to hospital with a brain aneurysm in 2014, which he attributes to the stress he was under as he tried to sort out his passport problems.



The 62-year-old spent five months in hospital, where staff told the former British Rail worker that he might need to pay for his treatment, even though he had paid UK taxes for more than 40 years.

“They showed me a bill for the brain operation. I think it was £5,000,” he said.

Upon discharge, he had nowhere to go because he had lost his home as a result of official doubts about his right to be in the UK. Hospital staff had been unable to find him a bed in a homeless shelter; having been classed as an “illegal immigrant” he was ineligible for a bed in a state-funded hostel. Despite his precarious health and lack of accommodation, he was allowed to leave the hospital and began sleeping rough. He had no warm clothes and few belongings because when was he evicted all his things had been thrown away.

“I wasn’t at all well. It was January or February; I was freezing that night. It was so cold I thought I was going to die,” he said.

After a night on the streets, he queued at the local housing department to try to get emergency housing. “I think they didn’t give two hoots, they just told me a lot of negative things. I ended up leaving and I had to go back sleeping on the streets. At the time I was trying to make myself strong, but when I think about it now, I think it is disgusting the way they treated me.”

Jones, who asked for his real name not to be published, arrived in London, aged 16, in 1972. He worked for the Ford car firm, then as a trackman for British Rail, but said he didn’t like working outside in the English weather.

Q&A What is the Windrush deportation crisis? Show Hide Who are the Windrush generation? They are people who arrived in the UK after the second world war from Caribbean countries at the invitation of the British government. The first group arrived on the ship MV Empire Windrush in June 1948. What happened to them? An estimated 50,000 people faced the risk of deportation if they had never formalised their residency status and did not have the required documentation to prove it. Why now? It stems from a policy, set out by Theresa May when she was home secretary, to make the UK 'a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants'. It requires employers, NHS staff, private landlords and other bodies to demand evidence of people’s citizenship or immigration status. Why do they not have the correct paperwork and status? Some children, often travelling on their parents’ passports, were never formally naturalised and many moved to the UK before the countries in which they were born became independent, so they assumed they were British. In some cases, they did not apply for passports. The Home Office did not keep a record of people entering the country and granted leave to remain, which was conferred on anyone living continuously in the country since before 1 January 1973. What did the government try and do to resolve the problem? A Home Office team was set up to ensure Commonwealth-born long-term UK residents would no longer find themselves classified as being in the UK illegally. But a month after one minister promised the cases would be resolved within two weeks, many remained destitute. In November 2018 home secretary Sajid Javid revealed that at least 11 Britons who had been wrongly deported had died. In April 2019 the government agreed to pay up to £200m in compensation. Photograph: Douglas Miller/Hulton Archive

“I decided to trade in and go to underground, and I became a night track man on the tube - which was much better; it was warmer. We renewed the rail, and we packed the ballast and the sleepers.” He spent time as a mechanic, and later packed shelves for Tesco.

In around 2013 he began to experience problems with his undocumented status. “That mad man [David] Cameron said you can’t have anything unless you have papers; I lost my property before I went to hospital,” he said.

Home Office 'failed to foresee policy's terrible Windrush effects' Read more

It was a bitter feeling to be told he was not in the UK legally. His children are British citizens and his mother and siblings all live in the UK.

His mother came to London first and saved money so she could send for him.

“She was working as machinist in a clothing company; I think she made shirts. It was 12 years before she was able to send for me,” Jones said.

“She thought that we would have a better life here. People thought that there was gold on the streets of London – now I know that only one set of people get the gold.”

He never talked about their immigration status with his mother and was unaware that he needed evidence of his right to be in the country. “I don’t think they were fussy about immigration in those days like they are now.”

At some point, he realised a small slip of paper previously attached to page 31 of his passport, marked “no time limit”, had fallen out. He no longer had proof of residency.

After some time on the streets, the homelessness charity St Mungo’s spotted Jones and found him a bed. “They gave me some warm clothes. I had nothing. All my belongings were in the flat, and they threw everything away when I was evicted.”



Play Video 2:00 Who are the Windrush generation? – video explainer

They took him to Hackney council where he saw the manager, who told him: “We know you are legal. The problem is going to be how to prove it.”

He spent years trying to collect the evidence. He returned to Hackney and Stoke Newington college, where he had studied maths and science, but it had been converted into flats. He visited Hackney town hall and the libraries. “No papers had been stored anywhere,” he said.

“I’ve got some records; the Department for Work and Pensions have all my records – but for some reason that wasn’t enough,” he said. “It messed me up. You come over here legally, you work – then you find yourself living on the streets, getting help from nowhere.

“It was more than frightening. I worried they were going to send me to Jamaica, where I have no family. My children are here; my mother, who’s getting old, is here. I am very bitter about it. People need to understand what is going on. This government has ruined people’s lives.”

In January 2018 the Home Office finally confirmed Jones has indefinite leave to remain, after the charity Praxis intervened on his behalf. He has received no apology or compensation.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “Once we were aware of his case, we worked quickly to resolve this case.”

Glenda Caesar: ‘You feel lost. My children all have British passports’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Glenda Caesar. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian

For the past two decades, Glenda Caesar has lived in constant fear that at any moment she could get a knock at the door and be deported.



Caesar, 57, from London, has been trying to prove that she has a legal right to remain in England since 1998, when her mother died on the Caribbean island of Dominica.

Caesar attempted to go over to Dominica to bring her mother’s body back to Britain with relatives but was told she could not apply for a British passport.



She has been a UK resident since 1962, when she came over with her parents at the age of six months.

“I remember thinking, what? I have been here my whole life. I am British. At this time, I was getting child benefit and had been working. When confronted with the fact I could not get a British passport I thought: what is going on?” she said.

The grandmother of 11 said that she was told to prove her status, so she put together lots of documentation, including her parents’ marriage certificate, but was told it was not enough.

“You feel lost, you think: hold on a minute, my children all have British passports … but why are you questioning me?”

Caesar had spent her working life up until that point in NHS administration and suddenly found herself unable to support her children.

“I could not afford legal advice to get it sorted. I went for a free consultation and another one that cost me £60 an hour. I couldn’t afford it. It would be thousands of pounds. I searched on the government website to look at different policies but they seemed to change daily,” she said.

Caesar said she was supported by her children, who both work. “I live at home and don’t eat much, but I need my gas and electricity to be topped up ... I haven’t bought new clothes for a really long time.”

It was only on Thursday, after publicity about her plight and that of others in her situation, that the Home Office finally granted her indefinite right to remain.

“It’s a huge relief,” she said, her voice breaking. “I feel like I can now apply for jobs.”

Caesar planned to celebrate with her family on Sunday, inviting all her grandchildren over to drink champagne and talk about everything that they have been through. Then, with her new passport, she wants to plan a family holiday.

The ordeal had taken its toll. “I ended up going to a doctor for counselling. I got tearful a lot thinking about what was going on. The fact I now have citizenship has not really sunk in yet,” she said.



But the fight is not yet over. What she wants next is compensation for everything she has been through. “I am out of pocket and I don’t know, I will wait and see but I want to make sure we get what we are entitled to,” she said.

Whitfield Francis: ‘It’s destroying people’s lives’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Whitfield Francis. Photograph: Andrew Fox/The Guardian

Whitfield Francis, 58, was born in Jamaica in 1959 and came to the UK to join his parents when he was aged about seven with his two sisters, travelling on his eldest sibling’s passport, he said.

He has never left the UK since arriving and as a welder and fabricator even worked on repairing Royal Navy ships, but, since being made redundant four years ago, has been unable to work because he has been unable to prove he is in the country legally.

Francis said: “When I left school, I just needed a national insurance number. Now they want a visa or passport and now the question is: ‘Who gave you the right to work here?’ Well, I’ve been working here ever since [leaving] school.”

He said he first became aware of the precariousness of his status when he lost his last job with an agency, which included repairing naval ships at Plymouth docks.

Francis passed tests for a job at Jaguar but was unable to provide the documentation they requested, he said.

“I am not the brightest person in the world but I’m not the stupidest person either,” he said. “If I can be working for the MoD [Ministry of Defence], repairing naval vessels, I would have thought I would have all the documentation anyone needed.”

His life has been on hold ever since. Francis has been unable to get another job to support his family – he has four daughters who live with his ex-partner in Wales – and he has had to resort to sofa-surfing in Birmingham.

“I can’t even apply for a flat because they will ask the same question [as employers],” he said. “It’s pointless, the doors will be closed to me. It’s not a pleasant situation.”

Francis said he never got a passport because he had no wish to travel overseas.

In a strange twist to his tale and what is surely an unintended consequence of the “hostile environment”, he said he was being paid unemployment benefit.

“They’re willing to pay me unemployment benefits but I’d much rather be working,” he said. “I want to earn a living for me and my family. To get unemployment benefits I have to show I’m willing to work. I have got interviews but it’s pointless going in for interviews knowing I’m going to waste people’s time.”

He is now trying to get a biometric residence permit but that has been complicated by a fine he received at the beginning of last year for an out-of-date (by two days, according to Francis) MOT. He said he went into the Jamaican consulate and a woman there called a UK immigration official, whose advice was: “Keep yourself out of trouble for two years [until the offence is spent],” and then apply for a biometric permit. That will cost him £800, a considerable amount for someone who cannot work.

Francis said his two sisters who accompanied him from Jamaica (he has a third, who was born in the UK) were not facing the same problems as far as he knew.

Francis said he wanted to believe everything would be fine after Theresa May’s promises but remained sceptical given that she helped create the “hostile environment”. He said: “It seems like she used it as a way to get into power, not really thinking about what was going to happen. She’s created a void and people are falling in this void. It’s destroying people’s lives.”