“I did not trust the system”: lasting trauma of the victim Windrush prohibited by the United Kingdom for 10 years | Windrush scandal

WInston Jones worked hard to reconstruct his life later Home Office The errors meant that he was unable to return to his family in the United Kingdom for 10 years after having made a short holiday in Jamaica in 2005, enduring a decade of almost distinction and homeless in Kingston.

Jones, 64 years old, former oven manager at Saininsbury’s, used the money he received from the Windrush compensation scheme to create a podcast study and music recording unit in Manchester, working with his son to create opportunities for young clubs.

But he felt so traumatized by the experience of being mistakenly classified as a transgressor of immigration and closed by the country that he had been his home for 32 years which, even after the government had apologized for the Windrush scandalHe almost did not require compensation. Initially, he felt too frightened to contact the Ministry of the Interior to try to obtain the documentation by demonstrating his immigration status, because he thought there was a risk that he would be arrested.

“I didn’t trust the system. I thought they were trying to trap me,” he said, explaining that he turned around and returned to the railway station as soon as he saw the words “immigration center” above the building door.

His discomfort was justified. After 10 years of having been repeatedly prevented by British officials from returning to his five children in the United Kingdom, Jones managed to return home from Jamaica in 2015, having obtained a temporary tourist visa. But also in London, he fought to solve his immigration status. In 2017, a team of border force officers mounted a dawn raid at his daughter’s house, where he had visited, hoping to arrest him as an exaggeration. It was elsewhere, but the officers searched the bedroom of the grandchildren who sought him, terrifying the entire family.

He met the Minister of Migration Sehema Malhotra on Friday, speaking for the first time of his experiences, in an attempt to convince more people affected by the Windrush scandal to come forward to request compensation, such as the The government launches a 1.5 million pound fund to support candidatesIn recognition that many could still feel very nervous for the encounter with the staff of the offices.

Jones was managing the bakery in a great Sainsbury’s in Winchmore Hill north of London when he decided to go on vacation in Jamaica in 2002. He had not traveled there, nor did he take a flight anywhere, since he left Kingston in 1973 as 13 years old to join his mother, who worked as a nurse in the children’s department of a Stockport hospital and his father, who worked in the nearby Founds of Iron.

The first time he traveled in 2002, he had no difficulty; The second time, he was told that he should have obtained a stamp on the Jamaican passport confirming that he had the right to live in the United Kingdom. When he tried to do it at the Croydon headquarters of the Ministry of the Ministry in 2005 before a third visit, an official told him that he was not on the computerized system. Jones explained that this was due to the fact that he had come before computers were in use. A second officer recommended the first one who should go looking for the Jones file in the archives.

“He said something like:” I don’t have time to go to the archive, “Jones said. (These archives were subsequently destroyed in 2010.) Instead, Jones was told (erroneously) that he should have visited the consular officials of the United Kingdom in Jamaica to put the waste in order.

When he traveled there, he was unable to make an appointment at the high commission during his booked holiday period. British Airways staff refused to let him go on board the return flight. Jones was told to stay in Kingston to try to get a stamp on the passport, confirming that he was a return resident. When he managed to see them, the officials asked that further documents were sent by the United Kingdom. It took several months for his wedding certificate, the birth certificate of his son and his school registers to be sent. For reasons that are not completely clear, the staff told him that it was still an insufficient test and that at that point he had passed the number of consular appointments for which he was suitable.

British officials were “really bad”, they shouted and suggested that he could guarantee documents with criminal means, he said.

He lost his job with Sainsbury when he was unable to go home. “They thought I had gone on vacation and did not come back, and they stopped taking my calls,” he said. His children, aged two and 18 when he was refused for the first time the right to return home, lived in Manchester, while renting an apartment in London. His apartment was emptied and his car disappeared.

“I practiced sports throughout my life and I had about 90 trophies and certificates: boxing, cricket, badminton, football. Everything went, everything I owned, except what I had in my suitcase,” he said.

He did not have a family in Jamaica and therefore he was forced to surf of sofa, and sometimes he had to sleep on the beach with the Kingston homeless community. “There were low times,” he said, with powerful mildness. “I tried to remain positive; I really resisted a sense of hope that one day I would be able to go home.” His eldest daughter tried to find a lawyer who would offer legal advice at affordable prices; After a decade, he found someone who told him to request a tourist visa and was able to return. However, he was unable to regularize his status until the Windrush scandal became a political question in 2018.

“I lost everything absolutely. Nine grandchildren were born while I was away. I lost my children, 18, 18 and 21 years old, all the important milestones. My children also suffered a lot.”

When he was blocked in Jamaica, he made a recurring dream of flying home. “The plane would always crash, that was the dream I continued to make for 10 years,” he told Malhotra during the minister’s visit to his Manchester studies. “When I returned to the tourist visa, which expired after six months, that dream was reversed. I dreamed every night that I was forced to go back. I was a fugitive for three years; I was ready to go on tiptoe.”

He said that the victims of the scandal needed financial consultancy and compensation for lives ruined by the errors of the Ministry of the Ministry.