Cornwall child migrant woman gets passport apology

Mary-Ann Astbury moved from Canada to Britain in 1971

A woman who has lived in the UK for 47 years has received an apology from the Home Office after she was told she could not renew her passport.

Mary-Ann Astbury moved from Canada with her adoptive parents in 1971.

The Home Office said it would contact her "to discuss her options should she wish to apply to naturalise as a British citizen".

Ms Astbury, 54, said: "It's a step forward, but I still feel I am already a British citizen."

More stories from Cornwall

She arrived in the UK from a Commonwealth country at the same time as many Caribbean migrants in the so-called Windrush generation.

Like her, many of those who arrived as children travelled on their parents' passports and never applied for travel documents.

Mary-Ann Astbury, aged seven, the year before she arrived in the UK

Ms Astbury, from Porthtowan, Cornwall, said that when her passport application was rejected last year she "felt like I was being punished for being adopted".

She obtained a British passport in 1983 to visit relatives in Canada.

• Who are the Windrush generation?

• 'A nightmare, and it's not over yet'

• Reality Check: Could you prove you've been living in the UK?

After the passport expired she did not renew it because she could not afford to travel, but last year she put in her application.

But the passport office would not accept her expired passport as evidence, saying that its records only went back to 1985.

It said that it declined her application because she was not a British citizen and her biological parents were "unknown".

Mary-Ann Astbury's application for a new passport was rejected last year

"It's the principle and I'm angry," said Ms Astbury.

"I am a British citizen. I've grown up here and I've been here for 47 years.

"I've worked all my adult life, I've paid all my taxes, national insurance, everything. I've had two children here and I was married to an Englishman. I am British."

There are now 500,000 people resident in the UK who were born in a Commonwealth country and arrived before 1971 - including the Windrush arrivals - according to estimates by Oxford University's Migration Observatory.

The 1971 Immigration Act, which came into law in 1973, gave people who had already moved to Britain indefinite leave to remain.