Your feature (Dining across the divide, 13 February) states that one of the participants, Joyanna, “said her family had come here as part of the Windrush generation because they’d been specifically asked for; that was what the country needed at the time. She objected to people coming to the UK who haven’t been invited.” With all due respect to Joyanna, the Windrush generation did not require invitations to come to the UK.
My parents are of the Windrush generation (still going strong, having celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this month). I have the travel documents that my parents used to travel to the UK. My mother’s passport and the travel document issued to my father (there was a shortage of passports in Jamaica at the time, so it’s a piece of paper with his photograph attached) clearly state that they were British citizens.
As British citizens, the Windrush generation had a right to come to the UK and did not need to be invited. Despite coming from the same island, Jamaica, my parents met in the UK – I might not have existed if they hadn’t met in London.
My mother’s travel documents are a record of the changing times. Her first passport was a British one. Then, following Jamaica’s independence, there are two Jamaican passports (one with the all important “Indefinite leave to remain” stamp after a trip to Denmark for a family wedding), followed by three British passports after they were naturalised as British citizens in the 1980s – without having to pass a Life in the UK test after more than 20 years of living in the UK. The test is now a prerequisite for anyone seeking indefinite leave to remain or naturalisation as a British citizen.
Michelle Thomas
London
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