UK interior minister quits over Windrush scandal

LONDON (AP):

Britain's interior minister resigned yesterday amid a scandal over the authorities' mistreatment of long-term United Kingdom residents wrongly caught up in a government drive to reduce illegal immigration.

Prime Minister Theresa May's office said late yesterday that May had accepted the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

Rudd had been due to make a statement to Parliament today over the Windrush scandal, which has dominated headlines in Britain for days and has sparked intense criticism of the Conservative government's tough immigration policies.

The furore has grown since the Guardian newspaper reported that some people who went to the UK from the Caribbean in the decades after World War II had recently been refused medical care in Britain or threatened with deportation because they could not produce paperwork proving their right to reside in the country.

Those affected belong to the Windrush generation, named for the ship Empire Windrush, which in 1948 brought hundreds of Caribbean immigrants to Britain, which was seeking nurses, railway workers and others to help it rebuild after the devastation of World War II.

They and subsequent Caribbean migrants came from British colonies or ex-colonies and had an automatic right to settle in the UK. But some have been ensnared by tough new rules introduced since 2012 that were intended to make Britain a "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants.

Legal migrants have been denied housing, jobs or medical treatment because of requirements that landlords, employers and doctors check people's immigration status. Others have been told by the government that they are in Britain illegally and must leave.

The policy was introduced at a time when May, now the prime minister, was home secretary.

The opposition Liberal Democrat party's home affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, said Rudd had become "the fall guy to protect the prime minister."