Responding to the publication of the Home Office’s long-awaited White Paper on the future of the UK’s immigration system, Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said:

“This White Paper is a huge missed opportunity to reform a deeply harmful immigration system.

“This year’s appalling treatment of the Windrush generation exposed the real damage the Home Office has done - and continues to do – to people, families and communities, including people who are entitled to be exempt from its immigration powers.  

“Among other things, Sajid Javid’s White Paper fails to acknowledge the Home Office’s extortionate £1,012 fee which denies tens of thousands of children their rights to British citizenship. 

“On key immigration issues such as the need to reform the UK’s inhumane indefinite detention policies, the White Paper is unforgivably silent.

“And by refusing to change the UK’s refugee family reunion rules, the Home Office continues to condemn vulnerable children who have fled from war and persecution to life without their families.

“The announcement of a year-long consultation risks kicking the opportunity for urgently-needed widescale reform into the long grass.

“The Home Office has yet again failed to put people at the heart of its policies and practice.”