A victim of the Windrush scandal who was left stranded in Jamaica for 13 years has won a High Court challenge over the Home Office’s refusal to grant him British citizenship following his return to the UK.
Vernon Vanriel, 66, who came to the UK as a child in 1962 but was later wrongly excluded from re-entering the country, received an apology from Home Secretary Priti Patel in February.
In a personal letter to Mr Vanriel, Ms Patel referred to the injustice and hardship suffered by him and other members of the Windrush generation as “shameful”.
But she said it was with “deep regret” that a rule which requires five years of continuous residency in the UK before British citizenship can be granted could not be waived.
However, in a ruling on Thursday, Mr Justice Bourne said Ms Patel had wrongly concluded the five-year rule was “immovable” – in breach of the right to family life and freedom from discrimination.
Boxer Vernon Vanriel photographed in 1983
PA
The judge said the application of the rule, without “discretion or flexibility”, to victims of the Windrush scandal was incompatible with their rights and that Parliament could not have foreseen that scandal when it passed the law.
The ruling followed a legal challenge brought by Mr Vanriel and Eunice Tumi, who came to the UK from Ghana as a baby and was later refused re-entry in the 1980s due to a lack of paperwork, before eventually being granted leave to remain in 2018 following the Windrush scandal.
The judge said Mr Vanriel was a young child when he came to the UK from Jamaica with his mother in 1962, to join his father who was already working here.
He lived and worked in the UK, enjoying some success as a boxer and establishing a family life, with two children of his own.
Following his mother’s death, his father returned to Jamaica in the 1990s and Mr Vanriel had another child in Jamaica in 1998.
He travelled between the two countries regularly over the years to visit his father and his son, using a Jamaican passport with a stamp in which said he had indefinite leave to remain – although this was not reproduced when he renewed his passport in 2003.
He was first blocked from entering the UK when he tried to return after organising his father’s funeral in 2004, but this was overturned on appeal the following year and Mr Vanriel believed it was just a “hiccup in the system”, the judge said.
However, he was again blocked from returning to the UK in 2008 and remained stranded there until September 2018, when he returned after being granted leave to remain following the scandal.
The judge said Mr Vanriel endured “considerable hardship” as a result of health problems.
He then applied for British citizenship, but was refused because he had not lived in the UK for five years continuously.
In Ms Tumi’s case, she came to the UK from Ghana as a baby in the 1960s and her parents and siblings all had British citizenship.
She later moved between the two countries and the US, and had a daughter in the UK who is a British citizen.
But she was refused re-entry to the UK in the 1980s and remained living abroad until she applied again in the wake of the Windrush scandal and was granted leave to remain.
The judge said the Windrush scandal was a development which Parliament “cannot have anticipated” and led to the recognition that the group of people affected should be given “preferential treatment in the field of immigration and nationality”.
He said Mr Vanriel and Ms Tumi complained that they did not receive this preferential treatment because the five-year rule was not treated as discretionary.
He said they did not seek a relaxation of the requirement to prove a sufficient connection with the UK, adding: “Rather it was a relaxation of the requirement to prove that connection in a way which was impossible for them, by presence in the UK on a day when, through no fault of their own, they were prevented from being in the UK.”
The judge continued: “It is clear that in cases such as these, the Government’s aim of requiring citizenship applicants to prove commitment and connection to the UK could equally as well have been achieved by a less intrusive means, i.e. by applying a discretionary requirement rather than a rigid one.
“That is all the more apparent in light of the fact that the detailed requirements other than the five-year rule all contain some discretion or possibility of exception.
“In these circumstances I conclude that the severity of the effects of the treatment outweighed the importance of the Government’s objective, even when regard is had to positive measures for Windrush victims such as the payment of compensation.
Solicitor Jeremy Bloom of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, who represented Mr Vanriel and Ms Tumi, said: “This judgment is an absolute vindication for our clients who have shown amazing courage and determination to challenge the Home Office’s unlawful decisions.
“Our clients were locked out of the UK for years by the Home Office through no fault of their own, then told that they did not qualify for British citizenship because they did not meet the residency requirements.”
Mr Justice Bourne noted exceptions to the five-year rule are already made for Crown servants and members of the Armed Forces working overseas.
The rule is due to be altered by Parliament, so the law states in terms that discretion can be applied by decision makers.