Citizens of former British colonies in South Asia and Africa also became entangled in the scandal. The victims were members and descendants of the so-called Windrush generation – mostly Caribbean migrants who moved to Britain in the post World War II-era in answer to a call for labor shortages, with the first arriving on the Empire Windrush 75 years ago Thursday. Nwazota is one of thousands who found their lives derailed in what became to be known as the Windrush scandal, which saw the British Home Office deny residency rights and citizenship to many people who had been living in the UK legally for most, if not all, of their lives. The Home Office has taken my life from me.” But even though I’m back in the real world – it’s too late for me. “The first thing I did when I got my passport back was get a job – and I’m proud to say, I work as a bin man (refuse collector). Nwazota has since recovered and received his passport from the Home Office in 2022. “I had been told I was a British citizen – but I was still waiting to get back my passport, waiting for an apology from the Home Office – all while living in a van. Many of his documents were lost after he claims the council threw away his tent, and he could not receive response letters from the Home Office as he had no permanent address. Often, he would go to bed hungry due to his benefits being stopped, he recalled – as “no fixed abode” became his new identity in the corridors of the job center.Ĭhristmases and birthdays passed by for almost two decades until the Home Office acknowledged that Nwazota was a British citizen over a phone call in 2018, he said.įor the next four years, Nwazota says, he remained homeless while he struggled to regain his passport. He watched the world pass him by from the fringes of society: sleeping in a tent under a shop window, or in an abandoned van in a supermarket car park. He was forced to live in temporary accommodation, with intermittent periods of homelessness. His business was closed because he was prevented from working by the Home Office, and he could not gain employment or social housing due to his lack of documents, he said.

For 26 years, he was a UK citizen with a British passport – until it was confiscated by the Home Office after he tried to renew it in 2000, he told CNN.įor the next 22 years, Nwazota lived in constant fear of being deported as his life began to unravel. Carl Nwazota was born and grew up in the London suburb of Wembley to parents from Jamaica and Nigeria.

Empire rise of the middle kingdom