David Lammy and Jamaican deportees

[Myohmy111]

David Lammy’s speech, in which he is critical of the government’s decision to deport convicted offenders to Jamaica, was very impassioned. However, it was disingenuous of him to have made the connection between this issue and the Windrush scandal. The two are not the same; the Windrush debacle was a disgrace and involved numbers of innocent individuals being caught up and deported illegally to the Caribbean . Those who were deported today were convicted criminals who served at least 12 months in prison and crucially, they were subject to due process. Unless there is evidence to indicate that other nationals of different ethnicities and races, such as white Australians, have not been subject to the same level of enforcement of this policy , he is wrong to label it as a racist move by the government.

If you can't present evidence that is compelling for your argument maybe you should stop debating?

You've already been proven to be wrong in some of your statements so please back your claims with evidence.

Your posts are very racist though and show a clear lack of understanding of the issues here.

@SimonJT I agree with you and I am sorry for how you were treated.

Fucking hell the knee jerk racism on here is terrifying. Lanny is a decent man who wants the law applied fairly across the board. That’s all. Why is that so hard to grasp?

@malylis and others re Rolf Harris.

But when Rolf Harris is not on a plane home (sex offender, not a UK national, sentenced to more than 12 months in prison) we can conclude that there are structural reasons why Jamaican nationals are being sent home.

Rolf Harris is a British citizen by descent. The UK government has therefore no power to strip him of his citizenship, and hasn't had the power to deport its own citizens to Australia since... well, Victorian times.

The same probably applies to a good many other Australian crims: they're British citizens.

Begum lost her citizenship because of her ISIS involvement, there are special rules about that sort of thing.

For this saying Lammy sees racism wherever he is maybe it’s because there is racism: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/15/bame-offenders-most-likely-to-be-jailed-for-drug-offences-research-reveals

For similar crimes black offenders are more likely to be sentenced to a custodial sentence than their Caucasian counterparts. Many of those who were deported yesterday would have been unlikely to have received the sentence that ended in them being in that position had they been white.

"Rolf Harris is Australian. We sent him back in ..... oh wait...."

Oh wait, you have no idea whether he also has a British passport. It's highly likely he's obtained one down the years, clearly been there long enough to qualify and previously clean record, and there's no way you'd know about it. That's the problem with all of this stuff - people rarely know all of the actual facts and details of the legal situations, yet happily assume away and make sweeping comparisons and rash judgements.

Rolf Harris' parents were British and born in Britain.

He won't have been granted the right to have a UK passport (ie, UK citizenship). He'll have had that right ever since his mother, while in labour, said "Can you see what it is yet?"

This matters because you can be stripped of British citizenship if given by grant (if you do something bad enough) but not if you have it from birth, ie, by descent.

He's an Australian citizen.

Totally agree OP

The reason Lammy is comparing this to Windrush is that, like the Windrush generation, these people arrived in the UK ages ago, when immigration rules weren't as strict as they are now, and have been resident in the UK so long that they would have been long entitled to Britush citizenship.

I believe that countries that embrace immigration have a duty to treat their immigrants fairly. I think it is immoral to punish a crime differently according to where the person who committed the crime was born. Fine, the UK wants to close its borders now but these are people that arrived 20 and 30 years ago, they and their parents were allowed to come and make a life and contribute to the UK, so I believe that they should be treated like other British criminals.

i think it is immoral to punish a crime differently according to where the person who committed the crime was born I’d love to kick out all British born criminals convicted of rape etc but kick them out to where?

@malylis @TomPinch Rolf Harris is a british citizen. He was born in 1930. Australians born before 1949 are automatically British Citizens. Therefore he could not be deported.

David Lanny is right.

Black men are more likely to go to prison for things white men won’t as the entire criminal justice symptoms will give white men another chance where possible. Drugs offences especially - I know black men who have been imprisoned (or the police have tried to prosecute) for minor things like having weed for personal use. So if the criminal justice system is now looking to deport them on top of targetting them then they should do the same for the millions of British people with Irish and other European / American links / dual citizenship too. But they don’t

@ Newmetoday - yet Irish pedos aren’t being deported. Why is this?

It's a disgrace.

Where are the planes full of terrorists and wife beaters? Rapists? To other countries?

Rolf Harris indeed. FFS.

Why specifically Jamaicans to Jamaica? Jamaicans who came here as children? Jamaicans we baked? So - British kids? Who - as a PP rightly pointed out - sold the drugs that those deporting him bought and partied on. Perhaps wealthy users of Coke should also be arrested, given lengthy jail terms and then put on a plane "home". No?

The whole thing feels contrived to target a specific group. It took a fucking lifetime to rid ourselves of the Hook guy (and others), so concerned were we with his right to a family life. Apparently some ethnic groups are more entitled to a family life than others.

Its funny how the racists here think counter accusations justify their bigotry.

Back up your claims!

Rolf Harris holds Australian citizenship.

Its funny though cause some of those deported through Windrush were British Citizens too. Didn't seem to matter though

One case the person had been here since he was 13. All his family were here. Didnt seem right to me.