Show caption Hubert Howard outside Lunar House, Croydon. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian Commonwealth immigration ‘It’s destroyed my life’: Windrush victim recognised as legal citizen after 13 years In a rare insight into the workings of Lunar House immigration HQ, Hubert Howard recounts how he lost his job and was denied benefits after the Home Office said he was an illegal migrant Amelia Gentleman @ameliagentleman Thu 10 May 2018 19.03 BST Share on Facebook

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For the past 13 years, Hubert Howard has tried repeatedly to persuade the Home Office that he is in the UK legally, having arrived here in 1960, aged three, with his mother. His repeated attempts to obtain a British passport were rejected, and as a result he lost his job and was denied benefits, leaving him with no money to live on. More significantly, he was unable to travel to visit his mother in Jamaica before she died.

Over the course of about 45 minutes on Thursday afternoon, a Home Office employee reviewed Howard’s papers, breezily admitted that mistakes had been made, apologised, and issued him with an A4 piece of paper confirming that he was not an illegal immigrant.

The speed and ease with which the situation was resolved reduced Howard to tears as he left the building. “Thirteen years. This has been painful for me. It has been painful for all the people around me,” he said, in the alleyway outside Lunar House, the immigration headquarters in Croydon. “It has been a struggle and it’s destroyed my life.”

Howard was seen by one of the Home Office’s new Windrush taskforce staff. Earlier this week he had asked if the Guardian could sit in on his interview, and Home Office press officers agreed on the basis that no names of Home Office staff were printed and no direct quotes from their comments to Howard were included in an article.

Howard’s name was on a list of about 25 Windrush names at the door of Lunar House, marked with an asterisk; he was seen immediately. Staff asked him how his journey to Croydon had been and made sympathetic noises when he said he had had to travel quite far.

The stamp inside Howard’s mother’s passport, showing they were given indefinite leave to remain. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

A friendly Home Office employee took the package of documents that Howard had brought, and reassured him that since he had his mother’s original colonial-era British passport, there would be no difficulty granting him a biometric document registering that he is living legally in the UK, and proving that he has the right to work, to NHS treatment, and to have access to all state-funded services.

The opening pages show that the blue-covered passport was issued by the colonial government of the day in Jamaica. It describes the bearer as “British subject: Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies”, and it documents that Howard travelled to the UK in 1960; his name is written on the page after his mother’s photograph, and the document contains an entry stamp confirming that they were both given indefinite leave to remain on arriving in Britain.

Howard asked the official why it was that previous attempts to regularise his status had been rejected. He asked why the Home Office had repeatedly incorrectly addressed letters to him as Howard Leslie (his middle name) and had failed to correct this administrative error whenever he raised it. The official said it was hard for him to answer those questions, but acknowledged that a number of other Windrush victims had raised similar issues.

The official tried to be reassuring, told Howard not to worry, and said that staff were trying to err on the side of granting people the right to reside in the UK, and did not want to refuse anyone on the basis of not having enough documents. No amount of documentation was too small, Howard was told, and staff would liaise with tax offices (something that has never previously been done) in order to cross-check records.

Howard said he had no shortage of documents and pulled out a photocopy of his primary school class register from the 1960s (happily obtained before the school shut down and became an academy, when records were destroyed), which he has previously submitted as part of a fat dossier of evidence that he has lived here continuously for over half a century.

“What happened to my files? What happened to my previous applications? Every time I called they said they didn’t know anything about me,” Howard said, managing to control his dismay and incredulity at the extraordinary change in official attitude towards him.

Howard, 61, who has two adult children (both of whom have British passports) said he had first made an attempt to naturalise in 2007 but that application was not completed because he was asked to sign up for an English language course (despite explaining that he had been in the UK since he was three, and that in any case English is Jamaica’s official language); when he tried to sign up for the course anyway, it had been discontinued, and his attempts to explain this to Home Office staff were futile, because no one ever answered his numerous calls to a helpline.

He had tried to explain to the Home Office again in 2008 that he was here legally, and again in 2011. In 2012, he was sacked from his long-standing job with the Peabody Housing Association because the Home Office had told them they were employing an illegal migrant. He spent most of the week that he was sacked making calls from his manager’s office, attempting to speak to Home Office officials. “I was talking to them the day I lost my job. The Home Office lady said there’s nothing I can do. I feel so sorry for you but we have no record of you,” he said. “They refused to listen to me. I begged them for an interview. They wrote in a letter that they don’t do face-to-face interviews.”

He applied for legal aid in 2013 to get help to sort out his immigration status out – because by that point he was unable to work and not receiving benefits. In 2014, his application was rejected because he had not sent in the original documents. He had sent copies because the Home Office had previously lost some of his documents, and he was very worried about sending his mother’s original passport.

At this point he became very ill, had to have some of his foot amputated, and developed leukaemia – a dramatic decline in his health that he attributes indirectly to the prolonged stress of his immigration battle. His ill health meant that he was unable to focus on his citizenship problems until he was interviewed by the Guardian in February, and the Home Office got in touch out of the blue with a letter telling him how to apply to naturalise (information that he was already very familiar with).

He has no idea how many fruitless phone calls he has made or attempted to make to the Home Office, but estimates it would be over 50 over the course of 13 years.

He asked the official about compensation, and was told that no details had yet been decided by the government, but that once they were, staff would call him. Howard asked if anyone was going to apologise to him, and the official said that he was sorry for any problems Howard had experienced, and added that the prime minister and the former home secretary had also apologised. The official said he did not know how the errors had been made.

After the interview, officials reviewed Howard’s papers for an hour, and then issued him with the temporary document, proving his right to be in the UK. Another friendly member of staff said the Home Office was expediting the production of biometric cards (the formal driving licence-sized photo ID) for Windrush citizens, and he could expect one to be couriered to his home in the next three to four days, or even sooner.

Outside the building, Howard abandoned his attempt to rein in his emotions and wept. “I feel let down; I feel terrible; I don’t see how an organisation calling itself the Home Office can treat people like this; I don’t understand how the government can treat people like this,” he said.

“I feel relief that it is over, but I’m very, very angry that I had to go through all this. It has completely ruined my life. I couldn’t do anything. Buying clothes was a problem. Friends had to buy them for me. I couldn’t afford them. I’m someone who has always worked and paid taxes – from the 1970s until 2012.”

He has not really thought about compensation yet, but calculates he might be owed £25,000 a year in lost earnings for five years (a total of £125,000), before the wasted time and the hurt to his mother, who died without his support, are included in the equation.

“The worst thing that has happened to me in my entire life was that my mother passed away, and I wasn’t with her. She was a grafter. She worked in factories, she saved to bring me over. She taught me to read and write, when I was in trouble at school. She did everything for me. I haven’t been by her graveside,” he said.