Theresa May, the former Prime Minister of the UK, has admitted to making mistakes with her “hostile environment” policies towards illegal immigration. During an ITV documentary, May acknowledged that she failed to anticipate the difficulties these policies would create for legal immigrants such as the Windrush generation. May apologized to Caribbean leaders in 2018 over the Windrush scandal, in which demands for missing documentation led to many people being threatened with deportation. The policies she introduced when she was home secretary caused “serious injustice” for those immigrants who arrived from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s, according to the UK’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
May also acknowledged that the Home Office vans sponsored in 2013 with “Go home or face arrest” written on them were “wrong,” and that the government discontinued them after a short time. May was home secretary from 2010 to 2016 and took responsibility for Home Office policies during that period. She said that the department should have made more of an effort to identify those who may be caught up in the difficulties of Windrush, adding that they should have asked if there were other people at risk.
In the documentary, entitled “Theresa May: The Accidental Prime Minister,” May also gave her thoughts on her time as prime minister between 2016 and 2019. She admitted that she should have met Grenfell Tower survivors sooner after the 2017 fire. May also described Donald Trump as an “unpredictable” president, adding that his “unpredictability is difficult to deal with.” Gavin Barwell, May’s chief of staff, said that the most disheartening conversation he had with the former US President was over Sergei and Yulia Skripal’s poisoning in 2018.
The documentary will be broadcast on June 5th
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More