‘We were invited here, then thrown away’

Tony Perry, 62, pictured above, arrived in Britain in 1959 from Jamaica to join his parents. He spent time serving in the navy and later became a social worker for Haringey council, helping troubled children. He has also worked as a pastor.

He first realised there was a problem with his immigration status in 2001 when he applied to get a passport and was refused. He was unable to travel to see his mother, and was told by the Home Office: “We’re sorry to inform you that you are not a British citizen.” He was devastated.

“I didn’t want to tell anyone what happened; I felt ashamed,” he said. “It was like a punch in the stomach. I can’t explain how it made me feel. I served on Her Majesty’s behalf. I’m a British Jamaican West Indian Caribbean, but someone came and crossed a bit of that out; they erased a bit of my life.” He was worried he would lose his job working with children if anyone found out about his immigration issues. “I fell apart for about 10 years.”

When he went to the Windrush taskforce in May, they took his fingerprints and issued a biometric residency card. “There was a young guy there, he was really nice; he said you’ve always been British.” But he is upset that his status as a British citizen has been downgraded to resident.

Perry has not applied for citizenship because he feels he shouldn’t have to as he has always been British. “We were invited here, and then thrown away again, like so much rubbish,” he said. “This is a very dark chapter in British politics.”

‘I didn’t see my dad before he died’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Noel Smith at home in east London. Photograph: Richard Saker/Observer

Noel Smith, 57, is the oldest of seven brothers and sisters, and the only one born in Jamaica – his younger siblings were all born in London. His parents left him behind in 1963 with his grandparents in Jamaica while they travelled to the UK to work; they planned to return after five years but their plans changed.

They struggled to bring him to the England, and Smith was 29 before there was money for him to visit. On that trip in 1990, he was only given a one-week visa by officials at the UK border; his mother cried when she found out she was only going to be allowed to spend one week with him.

In 1993 he returned, and officials gave him just a two-week visa. In 2002 he came for a third time and was allowed to stay for six months – he was happy finally to spend time with his family. That time he was given leave to extend the visa, was allowed to work, and got a job in a hotel.

He was required to sign in with the Home Office on a monthly basis, but on one occasion missed an appointment due to sickness. At the next visit he was deported without warning to Jamaica, and told he could not return to the UK for five years. His father died while he was there and he was unable to speak to him or see him before he died.

He was only able finally to return in 2015 and now has citizenship. He is wondering if the Home Office will apologise for its treatment of him over three decades as he tried to spend time with his parents and six siblings in the UK, and if he is eligible for compensation. “The Home Office messed up my life. Because of them I didn’t see my dad before he died and it really shakes me; when I think about it sometimes I cry.”

Stuck in limbo waiting for news

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Euen Herbert-Small moved to the UK in 2003. Photograph: Richard Saker/Observer

Euen Herbert-Small, 38, is a second generation Windrush descendant and has spent 15 weeks in immigration detention centres over the past decade, as he has struggled to secure his immigration status. The IT engineer was born in 1980, automatically becoming a British subject citizen of the UK and Colonies by birth in Saint Kitts and Nevis, which was a British colony until September 1983.

His grandfather came to the UK in 1955 from British West Indies Nevis, and is British. His parents were also born British subject citizens of the UK and Colonies. He moved to the UK in 2003 (although he believes he spent some time here as a baby with his now deceased father), and has been repeatedly detained by the Home Office, spending 12 weeks in detention in the autumn of 2011.

Frustrated by the lack of clarity around his immigration status, he went to the police in December 2017 and asked to be detained; he was held for nearly 24 hours under immigration powers and then released. He was told by the immigration enforcement teams at London Bridge that he could not be detained as there was no prospect of him being removed from the UK, he said.

He feels stuck in limbo: he wants to continue his career as an IT engineer, but is not allowed to work. He was unable to travel to New York for his father’s funeral in 2011. He met and spoke to Theresa May and Sajid Javid outside Westminster Abbey on Windrush day in June, and they promised to look into his case, but there has been no news.

‘I was born under the British flag’

Lydden Lewis, 68, arrived in the UK in 1961, aged 11, from Jamaica the year before it became independent. He still has his original passport he travelled with from Jamaica which describes him as a citizen of the UK and Colonies.

For years he has been trying to get a passport so he can travel – but was unable to pay the £900 fee for citizenship and felt he should not have to, because he argued he was already a citizen. He visited the Windrush taskforce in their London headquarters seven weeks ago. He says he saw four different people that day, but no decision was taken. Instead his passports and other documents were retained and have not been returned to him.

He was told that officials needed to investigate his spent criminal convictions before they can process his application for citizenship. He served time in prison in the early 1970s for robbery, but he points out that he served his sentence and was released from prison over 40 years ago.

“I was born under the British flag. When I came here, Jamaica didn’t have its own passport or flag,” he said. He said got in trouble with the police in his 20s, when he was “young and wild”. “I didn’t hurt anybody; it wasn’t anything major – so I don’t see why almost 50 years later the Home Office are bringing it up,” he said.

He is worried about the ongoing delay in processing his application, and is confused about why the Home Office has not immediately recognised that he was born a British citizen and remains one.