Two years after the Windrush scandal, many are waiting for compensation from the new UK

Dominic Akers-Paul, 27, is still awaiting full compensation that he believes the UK government owes him right.

Problems related to immigration documentation have cast a disturbing shadow over his personal and professional experience among the thousands of Windrush victims.

His mother was born at sea, as his grandmother traveled to St Kitts and Nevis, a two-island nation in the Caribbean and a former colony of Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Therefore, they were not considered British citizens.

Throughout his life, Dominic’s mother had difficulty proving that she was British, a problem that was passed on to her son.

At the age of 18 before he finally received a passport from the British government, Akers-Paul was banned from leaving the country and was unable to attend his grandmother’s funeral in the Caribbean.

He couldn’t even work.

After finishing high school at the age of 16, Akers-Paul wanted to start studying. But he had to abandon that plan when the company he wanted to hire asked him for the right to work. At the time, he did not have the proper documents.

Many of the Windrush generation – people who came to the UK from the Caribbean from 1948 to 1971 – have found that they do not have adequate immigration documentation as a result of the government’s failure.

Victims who never formalized the immigration status were misclassified by the government as illegal residences in the UK.

The scandal also affects the descendants of these victims, like Akers-Paul.

According to the controversial hostile environmental policy in the UK – an official strategy announced in 2012 to make life as difficult as possible for those without the right to stay – health, employment and well-being were denied to other Windrush generation and other Commonwealth citizens.

In April 2019, a year after the Windrush scandal occurred, the UK Home Office created a compensation plan to repair the damage.

But the plaintiffs and defenders considered the offer inappropriate, after considering the lengthy test many had endured.

The scheme was revamped in December 2020 after a loud shout.

The Home Office increased the “Tier 1” minimum payment – a basic level for everyone who admits that the Home Office is a victim of the Windrush scandal – from £ 250 to £ 10,000 ($ 350 to $ 14,100).

Since May last year, Akers-Paul has been struggling with the Interior Ministry to make its payment.

Initially he was offered a Tier 1 payment before £ 3,000 ($ 4,300), then the amount was increased to £ 40,000 ($ 56,400).

Considering that Akers-Paul deserved further examination of his case, he made a Level 2 application.

This category acknowledges that the victim has had great difficulty as a result of the scandal.

The Interior Ministry has called for extensive evidence of the suffering – evidence that Akers-Paul was fired from his job a few years ago because he did not have a passport.

Campaigns say this type of evidence is impossible to provide because it has not been electronically processed or simply no longer exists.

“[The caseworker] He said there was no loss of profit because I didn’t keep one of the letters stating that I couldn’t be hired because I didn’t have a passport. Because I can’t prove that, they can’t offer any rewards, ”Akers-Paul said.

“The evidence they want to give you, they know you won’t, and then when you can’t give it, they can’t reward you for something you can’t prove … So it’s something like that. Everything is ready to fail.”

In addition, for lack of documentation that he has been unable to work or leave the country for 18 years. “[the Home Office] he said it was only two months of damage, ”he said.

Akers-Paul pictured it with his mother on graduation day [Courtesy: Dominic Akers-Paul]

Akers-Paul has been denied a Tier 2 application by the Interior Ministry, assisted by lawyers working with Windrush Lives to help victims of the scandal.

Windrush Lives told Al Jazeera: “The burden of proof placed on Windrush Compensation Scheme applicants is very high and in many cases cannot be met.

“Windrush is a reverse conversion of responsibility for the scandal. This allows the plaintiffs to once again have no evidence to prove that they are precisely the enemies of the environmental policy they are pursuing through the Regime.”

Last month, a study by the National Audit Office (NAO) showed that the government’s initial estimates were that 633 people had received 15,000 paid applicants.

In a statement to Parliament on April 29, Interior Minister Priti Patel acknowledged that more than 500 cases out of the 1,417 cases currently being examined by the Interior Ministry have been examined for more than a year.

The Interior Ministry recently revealed that 21 people have been killed waiting for payment of compensation claims.

The Patrick Vernon campaign called for the Windrush claims scheme to be managed independently by a non-governmental agency, “to give confidence, respect, empathy and confidence to victims and families.”

This petition has garnered nearly 60,000 signatures.

He told Al Jazeera that the NAO report stresses the need to remove the compensation scheme from the hands of the Interior Ministry.

“The scheme was not designed to correct the wrongs in the spirit and essence of restorative justice,” Vernon told Al Jazeera. “Bureaucracy and constant delays exacerbate the anxiety and trauma of victims and their families.”

He said the scheme “was not designed in conjunction with the victims, but rather based on the current processes that are part of the nature of structural racism and the ongoing implementation of hostile environmental policy in the Home Office.”