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A man caught up in the Windrush scandal who resorted to sleeping in a freezing bin shed has finally been allowed to stay in the UK after a 10-year battle.
Roy Harrison, 44, came to the UK in 1984 aged six. He was abandoned by his mother as a newborn in Jamaica and left on his grandmother’s doorstep.
At the age of six, he moved to the UK to live with an aunt. He was granted indefinite leave to remain and was taken into care at the age of 10.
The Home Office decided to strip Harrison of his indefinite leave to remain in 2012 after he was sentenced to eight months in prison for the offence.
Harrison was charged with theft after being caught in the 2011 riots following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan. He went to a shop in Croydon to look for one of his sons and, although CCTV showed him leaving empty-handed, he was charged and advised to plead guilty.
After leaving prison, he fought for 10 years to regain his right to live in the UK, living in dire conditions because he was no longer eligible for benefits.
Since being told he could stay, Harrison moved from a bin shed in south London to a nearby empty caravan lent to him by a friend, without heating and running water. He can claim benefits but has been told he won’t get any money until January.
Harrison’s solicitor, Jacqueline McKenzie of Leigh Day, said: “The Home Office spent a decade trying to deport a vulnerable six-year-old to the UK to join the Windrush generation’s aunt. As a Windrush family child, someone who looked after a young person with evidence of multiple complex needs should never have found themselves at risk of deportation and destitution.
“I have not yet processed the Home Office decision,” Harrison told the Guardian. “I have spent many years fighting for what was before. A decade has been wasted and it’s all down to a hostile environment and that idiot Theresa May. I know I should be on the moon but I’ve waited too long… My first task is to save up for a generator so I can stay warm in the fleet.”
McKenzie said: “The reinstatement of his indefinite leave is positive but I’m not surprised he describes it as a bittersweet moment as challenges remain to get his life back on track after years of fighting and exhausting the system. . The case, which The Windrush scandal cuts across themes of deportation of people who have lived most of their lives in the UK, signaling the need for more urgent reform in both law and policy.”
Harrison added: “What I want to say to Theresa May is: ‘You have made things very unfavorable for me and I have lost everything as a result.’ The landscape gardening business I started would surely have taken off by now.I also lost my partner along with my two cats and my three dogs.
“I try not to think about it too much, because if I did it would unleash the whole Niagara Falls inside of me. I hope that if my ex-partner reads this he will try to find me again. For the last 10 years I have found faith in God. I say to myself: ‘Now onwards and upwards.’
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