Everyone in Jamaica knows someone who “lives in foreign” – the Jamaican expression for abroad. There have been generations of children who have been left at home with family members as their parents went to work in the UK, the US or Canada just to be able to provide for them.
Later on, they were often sent for, once people’s papers were in order. But even before the Windrush revelations, the prevailing mood was that the mother country was far from accommodating to this side of the family.
Icilda Williams left Jamaica for the UK in May 1962, a few months before the island went from a colony to an independent nation.
Her first passport was British; it was black and had the Queen’s coat of arms and with Jamaica printed underneath; she was 27 years old and a subject.
“I think the British government forget what we went through, the hard work. The conditions in the hospitals were awful, we worked hard, raising our children, spending our money, buying houses, paying taxes, now we can’t even go back and forth.”
Now aged 84, she settled in Bradford, had seven children and believed she would always have the right to stay in the country. But in 2014 she travelled on holiday back to Jamaica and found she could not return.
She had never applied for a British passport despite the fact she would have been eligible; a change in the law in 2014 meant that she needed to prove the time she had been in the UK but she did not have the evidence.
“I never got round to it,” she says with resignation. “I was busy raising my kids. I didn’t have time – they were my priority.”
She says the British government should still have the paperwork to prove when she arrived in the UK but, without that proof, she is stuck in Jamaica.
The house she planned to spend part of her retirement in has become her permanent home. “I’m too old to wait in lines at the high commission in Kingston, to go for interview after interview – we should be able to visit our families, my pension is in the UK, my house is there, my kids are there.”
The vibe from the passengers coming out of Norman Manley international in Kingston is not like the island’s other main airport, in Montego Bay, the resort destination. Here, those arriving are mainly either on business or coming home.
As the British Airways flight comes in from London, the red cap porters struggle with suitcases packed to capacity as reunions take place, wave after wave.
V Anderson, who has just stepped off the the flight, is looking dapper. Now 74, the retired structural engineer from South West London was 14 when he arrived in the UK in early 1962. His parents were onboard some of the first ships to arrive in Tilbury in the 50s and he realises he could have been in the same situation as some of those currently caught up in this.
“They’re all bonkers, mate,” he said. “Every minute each government adds something else to the way they want it,” referencing continual changes in UK immigration policy.
“I went up on a British passport but I did my papers straightaway in 1972 as soon as you could after 10 years but some people ignored it. But it doesn’t matter, we were all British. How can you send someone back who’s never lived here or was raised here?”
It took him 41 years to travel back to the land of his birth and he understands how some could have fallen between the cracks in government policy.
But it was something that had been foreseen by many others, including Aloun Ndombet-Assamba, who served as High Commissioner for Jamaica in London between 2012 and 2016.
“We put this on the agenda at Chogm (Commonwealth heads of government meeting) in Sri Lanka in 2013. How can one Commonwealth member pass laws that would affect other members so much? But promises were made to remove it from the communique.”
But when she saw that many people who had been in the UK for decades were being directly affected, she travelled the country and pushed to get the people regularised as Jamaicans as quickly as possible, to use landing cards, school records, mortgage and NHS records as evidence of how long people had been in the country.
“I’m glad the home secretary and the prime minister have now acknowledged a great hurt and disservice was done to the Windrush generation. I’m upset it’s come to this but glad that hopefully these people will get their right to be there.”
But this has opened up the way people here view the relationship with the UK: radio call-in shows and debates on TV do not normally focus on the Commonwealth heads of government meeting but things have got fiery on air.
People want to know what the Jamaican authorities have done to stop some of these planned deportations, what support was given to those affected or were they treated like most regular deportees, the overstayers, the ones who got into trouble.
Some, like Kimani, believe that Jamaicans should not be treated as other foreign nationals because of the shared history. Now 38, he arrived in the UK as a 14-year-old. He served time in prison, which eventually led to his deportation.
“We have the same Queen, the head of state in the UK is the head of state in Jamaica, how do you not recognise that?” Kimani believes that many are in a similar situation faced by the Windrush generation.
“In England I’ve got my mum, my four kids. I’ve been thrown back, my family ripped apart and destroyed for a mistake I’ve already paid for.” When he told officials the impact it would have on his family they told him to “use social media for communication”.
He is going to continue to fight, but since returning to Jamaica he is starting afresh with some new opportunities provided by the British High Commission: it has sponsored him for a short media course at the University of the West Indies, something he says will help him to re-integrate, and broaden his horizons.
But later in the day I meet another man, Derek, who arrived back earlier this year. He has been staying at someone’s house but they want him to move on.
“I’ve been walking the street all day trying to find somewhere to stay,” he says. The case of the Windrush generation and the speedy resolution that the government plans has given a false hope to people like Derek. “Hopefully they see people like me in a different way. I need them to look at my case.”
As he explains that he overstayed in the UK for 17 years, and he breaks down the nuance of his case, of the family he’s left behind and the life he has to somehow rebuild at the age of 60 in a country he barely recognises, I explain that it’s unlikely this story will change his personal situation. He lets out a sigh that shakes his entire body and the table we’re sitting at. It’s a hard reality for many who have been removed.