By Muhammad Mussa
LONDON (AA) – Sajid Javid was appointed Britain’s home secretary on Monday following the resignation of Amber Rudd over the Windrush Scandal involving the mistreatment of immigrants.
Javid was born in 1969 in Lancashire, north England, to Pakistani immigrant parents. His primary education was at a state school and his father was a bus driver. In 1989 Javid joined the Conservative Party and attended his first Conservative Party Conference, where he campaigned against Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s idea of closer alignment with the EU.
In May 2009, Javid was elected an MP for Bromsgrove in the city of Birmingham after its previous MP, Julie Kirkbride, resigned due to an expenses scandal, and continued to success in the 2010 general election where he got 70 percent of the votes as a Conservative candidate.
In April 2014, Javid was appointed Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport under then-Premier David Cameron. He was described by the Financial Times as being a true Thatcherite and the most robust right-winger in the Cabinet. Following the Conservative Party’s victory in the 2015 general election, Javid was appointed secretary of state for business, innovation and skills.
Although a supporter of remaining in the EU, Javid has described himself as being a Eurosceptic, telling the Daily Telegraph that he had “no time for ever-closer union. ”
Prior to his appointment as the home secretary, Javid was secretary of state for communities and local government since 2016, where he worked to build affordable housing for young owners as well as increase the quality of council housing.
On the Windrush Scandal, Javid told the Sunday Telegraph: “I was really concerned when I first started hearing and reading about some of the issues. It immediately impacted me.”
“I’m a second-generation migrant. My parents came to this country… just like the Windrush generation… When I heard about the Windrush issue I thought, ‘That could be my mum…it could be my dad…it could be my uncle…it could be me,” he added.
Javid is the first black and minority ethnic MP to head one of the Great Offices of State in the U.K.
The Windrush Generation, migrants from the Caribbean who relocated to the U.K. at the end of World War II and helped to rebuild the country, were denied healthcare and pensions, with some being threatened with arrest and deportation, due to not possessing the correct documents.
Prime Minister Theresa May has since made a public apology and has vowed to grant all Windrush migrants free citizenship.
