British Home Secretary Resigns

The members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s government are dropping like flies; the fourth person forced to resign in past six months is Ms. Amber Rudd, whose resignation followed those of Sir Michael Fallon, Priti Patel, and Damien Green. It was based on the Windrush scandal which had raised a protest and strong criticism lately.

The Windrush scandal arose when the word from government got out that the Home Office had destroyed landing documents for members of the Windrush generation, and then some of them along with their children ran a risk of deportation since they did not have paperwork anymore.

This left doubts on the legality of immigrants and they could be forced to leave the country. This scandal led to the resignation of the Home Secretary.

In her resignation letter, Ms. Rudd states that she takes “full responsibility” for not being aware of “information provided to her (office) which makes mention of targets”. The targets mentioned here are the ones regarding the deportations of illegal immigrants. She says that she “inadvertently misled” the government on this matter, which led to a very strong reaction from the masses, hence she has to resign.

Rudd was questioned by the Home Affairs Select Committee on government targets for the banishment of illegal immigrants, to which she responded that she had no information on those targets. Shortly after that on Saturday, above 200 Members of Parliament signed a letter to Theresa May alleging Amber Rudd of making up immigration policy “on the hoof” as a tactic to overcome the scandal.

According to Labour MP David Lammy, who phrased the letter said that the scandal was an “international embarrassment” for Britain. In his tweet, he said, “Amber Rudd resigned because she didn’t know what was going on in her own department and she had clearly lost the confidence of her own civil servants. The real issue is the hostile environment policy that caused this crisis in the first place.”