UK treatment of post-war migrants a concern for EU citizens - Verhofstadt

Discussion over the rights of European Union citizens in the United Kingdom after the country leaves the bloc must continue in light of UK immigration officials’ harsh treatment of post-war Caribbean migrants, the European Parliament’s Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt said on Wednesday.

Speaking in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Verhofstadt said the parliament wanted to be sure that EU citizens remaining in the UK after Brexit would not face a similar “bureaucratic nightmare”.

“I want first of all say to (European Council President) Donald Tusk, to the President of the Council, that for the European Parliament even with the Withdrawal Agreement now things are not over. We need still to have the citizens’ rights completed. Because certainly after the Windrush scandal in Britain we want to be sure that the same is not happening to our European citizens and that there is no bureaucratic nightmare there. So we’ll organise,” he added.

Known as the ‘Windrush generation’, migrants from the Caribbean were invited to Britain to plug labour shortfalls between 1948 and 1971.

They enjoyed a special status that has been eroded over the years by successive immigration reforms.

Some of their descendants have been wrongly labelled illegal immigrants, and in some cases denied rights, detained and threatened with deportation in a tightening of immigration rules overseen by British Prime Minister Theresa May when she was interior minister in 2012.

Reuters