May Has Really Screwed Up...

[SueEllen]

You know them do you Sue?

Unfortunately I know people who work in and have worked in different departments including the Home Office.

[xoggoth]

Yet again, governments not dealing with problems that you'd think would be totally obvious. All for getting rid of real illegals but the proofs required should have been wider, signed statement from employers etc.

[TwoWolves]

There is also the usual IT angle:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/0...e_home_office/

IR35, incompetence and management in-fighting to add to the mix.

[SueEllen]

Yet again, governments not dealing with problems that you'd think would be totally obvious. All for getting rid of real illegals but the proofs required should have been wider, signed statement from employers etc.

It's not that easy.

They want 4 pieces of evidence from every year they came here.

Do you have 4 pieces of evidence for every year since you were born to prove you were resident in the UK?

[SueEllen]

Mmmm - linky

The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants’ arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.

The former employee (who has asked for his name not to be printed) said it was decided in 2010 to destroy the disembarkation cards, which dated back to the 1950s and 60s, when the Home Office’s Whitgift Centre in Croydon was closed and the staff were moved to another site. Employees in his department told their managers it was a bad idea, because these papers were often the last remaining record of a person’s arrival date, in the event of uncertainty or lost documents. The files were destroyed in October that year, when Theresa May was home secretary.

From around 2013 onwards, he said, the number of requests from people from the Caribbean began to increase.

“Every week or two, someone would say: ‘I’ve got another one here,’” he said. “People were writing to say: ‘I’ve been here 45 years, I’ve never had a passport, I’ve never needed a passport. Now I’m being told I’m not British, because there is no record of me’.

“Because it was no longer possible to search in the archive of landing cards, people would be sent a standard letter that would state: ‘We have searched our records, we can find no trace of you in our files.’”

[BR14]

It's not that easy.

They want 4 pieces of evidence from every year they came here.

Do you have 4 pieces of evidence for every year since you were born to prove you were resident in the UK?

Good point, especially if you've been resident elsewhere, as a UK citizen, and returned

[AtW]

It's not that easy.

They want 4 pieces of evidence from every year they came here.

Do you have 4 pieces of evidence for every year since you were born to prove you were resident in the UK?

Yes

Next!!!

[vetran]

Its a farce, the home office failed to do the paperwork correctly when they arrived.
It then failed to do it later with subsequent governments.

Thousands of people are supposed to have lived 50+ years in the UK without leaving an official trace. I assume they never voted, paid council tax, paid income tax, claimed benefits or used a council or government service.

I doubt if they stayed intentionally under the radar they quite reasonably thought they were British citizens. It is just rank incompetence from our government.

Then because they "lost" these people they then bundle them up and send innocent little old ladies to Yarls wood.

[TwoWolves]

Mmmm - linky

I told you it was deliberate in the HO. There will be more revelations to come I'm sure.

[xoggoth]

Best guide seems to be here:

Windrush: How do you prove you've been living in the UK? - BBC News

It has not been using central tax and pension records that would prove someone has been working to support their application. Instead, the current system relies on people having kept their own documentation including payslips and bank statements dating back to the 1970s.

Sounds rather daft to not use official records. Who keeps payslips for N years?

PS Not sure where this "4 pieces of evidence per year" comes from though.