The Windrush Scandal could easily have happened under Labour.

The Conservatives may have blocked attempts to force the government to release internal documents relating to the Windrush scandal but it is clear that Theresa May has a lot to answer.

The House of Commons voted down the proposal after the Tories ordered their MPs to oppose it.

Labour had tried to use an archaic parliamentary procedure to force the government to hand over the files, which they said would reveal how much ministers knew about the problems facing Windrush generation immigrants.

After a lengthy debate, MPs rejected the motion by 316 votes to 221, giving the government a majority of 94.

It is without doubt that Theresa May should  share some of the blame for the the hostile environment policy is a set of administrative and legislative measures designed to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain, in the hope that they may "self deport". In 2012, the then Home Secretary Theresa May stated that "The aim is to create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants".^[5] The stated aim of the policy is to reduce immigration figures to the levels promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto However, the ruling which the Home Office used in October 2010 to carry out the destruction of the refugee status cards was originally made by the UK Border Agency in June 2009.

But she herself was following a precedent that was started under the then Labour government years earlier.

 As a regular contributor to this blog commented
 

Who said this in 2013? ‘The backlog in finding failed asylum seekers has gone up. The number of illegal immigrants deported has gone down, this is a growing catalogue of failure. Yet illegal immigration is deeply damaging.’ Nigel Farage? Theresa May? Amber Rudd? No it was labour's Yvette Cooper. And it was gordon brown who in 2007 exclaimed 'british jobs for british workers'. The grim fact of the matter is both tory and labour politicians have been ramping up anti immigrant rhetoric for years. on Some Tories will not be worried about Windrush scandal at all

 Just six MPs from the Labour left voted against the last immigration bill (three of whom are now the leader, shadow Home Secretary, and Shadow Chancellor),but

And it was only last year  that Labour MP Stephen Kinnock was writing in the Guardian...

 

The EU referendum was a vote for change on immigration. Free movement of people was rejected and now, as shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer stated in his recent Bloomberg speech, “the status quo is not an option”.
Some in the Labour party claim the proponents of managed migration are “Ukip-lite”. We reject this argument, which leaves a vacuum for the right to fill. Moreover, Labour has tended to attribute concerns about immigration to overstretched public services and unscrupulous employers, and tried to counter those anxieties with facts about the overall benefits of immigration.
But people are worried about more than pressures on jobs, wages and housing: they are anxious about culture, identity and the rate of change of communities. Many of the areas that voted Leave on 23 June have little or no EU immigration, so it is clear that concerns are not limited to the areas that have experienced large and rapid inward migration flows. They are nationwide, strongly held and generally immune to arguments based on abstract economic data.

Mr Kinnock may use Fair, Managed and Progressive a lot but the reality of his argument that there should be a two tier policy would lead to the same targerts problem.

 He says..

Labour must urgently press the government to put a progressive, fair and managed two-tier migration system at the heart of the Brexit negotiations. Within tier 1, highly skilled EU workers, such as doctors, teachers and engineers, could move to the UK on the basis of confirmed employment. The jobs they would fill must exceed agreed education, skills and income thresholds. For example, education to 18, plus a minimum of three years’ higher education or post-education work experience, combined with a minimum salary of £25,000 per year. EU students with a place at a British university would also be included in this tier.

Tier 2 would comprise low-skilled and semi-skilled EU workers, whose access to the UK labour market would be restricted by sector-based quotas, negotiated between government, industry and trade unions. This tier would cover sectors such as agriculture, food processing, retail, construction and hospitality. Quotas must be phased in over time and carefully designed to strike the right balance between maximising job and training opportunities for local workers and ensuring that sudden workforce shortages are averted. This could deliver the ultimate prize of a higher-wage, higher-skilled economy.

 Civil servants are not to blame for interpenetrating the rhetoric of Ministers from both Labour and Tory parties as that they should set and reach targets.

What we need is a change in mindset over immigration.

It is clear that many of the areas who voted Leave where ones that actually had the smallest number of immigrants.

We must counter the myth that immigration is bad  and that it doesn't cost jobs and increases pressure.

Indeed we must raise the question Schrödinger's  Immigratt and how are they are accused taking our Jobs whilst at the same time  living on Welfare at the same time constantly,

It will be a hard task but surrendering to editorials of the Sun, Mail and Express is leading us to a position , where government policy is directed by media owners who are tax exiles or not even British Citizens.