UK leader sorry for Caribbean citizens immigration mix-up

Ill Lawless
INTERNATIONAL.- British Prime Minister Theresa May made a personal apology Tuesday for the treatment of long-term U.K. residents from the Caribbean who have been asked to prove their right to stay in the country or face deportation.

The plight of legal residents wrongly identified as living in Britain illegally has erupted as the country hosts leaders from the 53-nation Commonwealth of the U.K. and its former colonies. May met with Caribbean leaders and envoys Tuesday, and told them “we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused.”

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People who came to Britain after World War II are known as the “Windrush generation,” after the ship Empire Windrush, which carried hundreds of Caribbean immigrants to Britain in 1948.

Those who arrived before a change in the law in 1971 had an automatic right to settle in the U.K.

But some from that generation, especially those who arrived as children on their parents’ passports, say they have been denied medical treatment or threatened with deportation because they can’t produce papers to prove their status.