An Afghan interpreter with two Afghan citizens/wikimedia. Some rights reserved.Last week the Home Office announced that it will waive the indefinite leave to remain fee for resettled former Afghan interpreters and other Locally Engaged Civilians (LEC) who supported the British army; this follows the example of the fee waiver for the Windrush generation and their families announced last month. Afghan interpreters and the Windrush generation share further commonalities. The majority of the West Indians on board of the MV Empire Windrush were veterans who fought for Britain in the Second World War.
The support from the Home Secretary and Defence secretary for the fee waiver is extremely welcome. Also welcome was their effective and swift coordination on an issue that indeed requires cross-Government responsibility, as MP Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee noted when he recently provided evidence on the case of Afghan interpreters to the Defence Select Committee. Now it is important to recognise and address the wider challenges facing former LEC; both in their protection and subsequent settlement.
The recent Windrush migration scandal has illustrated poignantly the tensions that can arise between people’s sense of belonging to a country, the societal recognition of that belonging, and their legal status and access to social rights. The Windrush West Indians are intrinsically intertwined with Britain’s colonial legacy, yet before substantial political and media pressure forced the Government to recognise this, this intertwinement offered little guarantee for the social rights associated with citizenship. The former local interpreters and other local staff who supported British military missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, have also received wide societal appreciation of their relationship with Britain, as evidenced in the many grassroots petitions in support of them, yet face challenges in relation to their protection and settlement.
