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Originally Posted by Damien
It seems like there are two problems with the 2014 immigration act.
One of those was the removal of protection for commonwealth citizens which it seems was already identified as an issue back in 1999.
But it's also this 'hostile environment' act which turns everyone into immigration police. This is less of a problem for clearly illegal immigrants but it turns out there is another category of people for whom the answer to their legal status is complicated. These are people who the act wasn't intended to target, who no-one has a problem with, but nonetheless do not have the full legal status and don't have the documentation required. The changes, as well as removing their protection, has forced every state entity, landlords and employers to flag them up and so they find themselves out of work, unable to access healthcare and even at risk of deportation!
It's hard to prove nationality especially if you don't have a United States style law where being born in the country makes you a national of it automatically.
---------- Post added at 09:28 ---------- Previous post was at 09:25 ----------
The 2014 act is what made these people need to get documentation without respect for long term residency i.e windrush.
Basically these people went around their entire lives thinking, rightly, they were here legally. In 2014 not only was this assumption overturned but also caught them in a situation where the NHS, landlords, employers and more would demand they prove something they have heithro not been required to prove and set very high standards to do so.
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1996 Asylum and Immigration Act
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8 Restrictions on employment.
(1)Subject to subsection (2) below, if any person (“the employer”) employs a person subject to immigration control (“the employee”) who has attained the age of 16, the employer shall be guilty of an offence if—
(a)the employee has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; or
(b)the employee’s leave is not valid and subsisting, or is subject to a condition precluding him from taking up the employment,
and (in either case) the employee does not satisfy such conditions as may be specified in an order made by the Secretary of State.
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Technically employment and other restrictions were there in 1996, if not before. They needed to be able to prove a "right to remain" back then.
If the NHS, landlords, employers, etc didn't do the checks everybody would have to wait for the results of a central government check. How many weeks/months would that take?