Paulette Wilson: Telford-raised Windrush gran made plea to government

The files show desperate pleas from Windrush citizens who were wrongly detained and the Home Office’s correspondence with those affected.

Jamaica-born Paulette Wilson, who was brought up in Wellington, was detained twice last year despite having been in the UK since the age of 10.

She wrote a letter to the government stating: “Please help me, this is my home.”

The files, released by the Home Office on request of the Human Rights Committee, also contain numerous documents submitted to the department demonstrating ‘consistent and holistic’ proof of their British residency, including national insurance numbers, letters from the Jamaican High Commission and pay slips.

They were published ahead of a hearing in which the committee probed the home secretary, Sajid Javid, and director-general of the Home Office’s Border Immigration and Citizenship System, Glyn Williams, in which they conceded that mistakes were made by the department in both cases and promised that lessons would be learnt.

In the case of Mrs Wilson, who came to the UK in 1968, her files show that in March 2017, a letter to the Home Office from the Jamaican High Commission confirmed that she entered the UK as a small child and that her family was based in Britain.

She also submitted 35 years of national insurance records, as well as medical records and evidence from a childhood friend. Yet the 61-year-old was detained on two occasions last year on the basis that ‘there was no current evidence of her lawful entry’.

Burden of proof

Asked to respond to her case, Mr Javid said he sympathised with Ms Wilson, who now lives in Wolverhampton, and conceded that the Home Office was wrong to put the ‘entire burden of proof on the individual’.

When Mr Williams was asked to respond to Ms Wilson’s case, he said: “I do think that was a mistake by us and we should have engaged more proactively and sympathetically with her, because I can see from the record that she was probably bewildered by the situation she had found herself in.”

Government guidelines state that anyone who settled in the UK by January 1, 1973, has the right to remain in the country.

Ms Wilson arrived in the UK from Jamaica as a 10-year-old in 1968, before immigration status rules were introduced.

She was was raised by her grandparents in Telford but when they died she was looked after by Shropshire Council and placed in the Vineyard children’s home in Wellington.

Her working life included being employed at the House of Commons, serving food to MPs. She was threatened with deportation and locked up in an immigration centre for a week in October, despite having lived in the UK for 50 years.

Finally, in January, she was told she could stay in England.

The Paulette Wilson Windrush Citizenship Project was launched earlier this year to help people like her who had been incorrectly identified as illegal immigrants.