Joseph Bravo left Jamaica for London in the early 1960s with his parents as a small child – as part of the wave of post-Second World War immigration to help rebuild the country – and moved to Leeds before the end of the decade. He has spent his life in Leeds, working as an electrician and playing in and managing community football teams. But when the 62-year-old applied for a passport to attend his daughter Charmaine’s wedding in Australia, the authorities told him he would first have to apply for British citizenship at a cost of hundreds of pounds. On April 4, the Chapel Allerton resident watched 32-year-old Charmaine approach the altar on FaceTime, describing it as “fantastic”, but admitting not being there “cut me up”. He went on: “She didn’t want to have the wedding, she was going to cancel the wedding. “I said no, you can’t do that everybody has already paid and one thing and the other. But she was heartbroken also.” Mr Bravo, who speaks in a Leeds accent, is one of many Windrush children who have lived in Britain for decades and were supposed to have been given the right to remain in 1971 but are now being denied access to healthcare, held in immigration detention centres, and threatened with deportation. For Mr Bravo, it “just doesn’t make sense” as he came to the country in “1963 or 1964” as a seven or eight year-old. When he was 17 his father got him a passport to prove his age to football coaches he played for, “because I was a big lad” and people thought he was older. In 1989, he was coaching a football team once known as Prince Philip’s in Leeds and obtained a one-year passport to travel to Amsterdam for a game. But in 2010 and then last year, the Passport Office said they had no records of his residence. He said: “I can’t see that I can spend 54 years in the country and they tell me that they don’t know that I’m here,” he said. “What if my daughter’s poorly in Australia and I want to go see her for the last time? I can’t. “What if she’s has a child and I wanna go and see my grandchild? I can’t. “And I haven’t done nothing wrong, I’m not an illegal immigrant, I haven’t stolen anything from anybody. It’s wrong.” LEEDS MP BRANDS TREATMENT OF LOYAL CITIZENS ‘A DISGRACE’ The treatment of the Windrush generation by the Government has been a “disgrace” and they should be formally given British citizenship immediately, a Leeds MP has said. Leeds North East MP Fabian Hamilton spoke out as Labour colleague David Lammy disclosed he had been contacted by a woman who arrived from the West Indies in the 1950s and whose son was facing deportation today. After posting details on Twitter, Mr Lammy said he was contacted by Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes who told him the removal of Mozi Haynes had been halted while his case was reviewed. Chapeltown in Leeds is home to one of the largest communities of the Windrush generation, who arrived in the UK as long ago as the 1940s in response to a labour shortage The area’s MP, Labour’s Mr Hamilton, said: “Many came to Britain following the Second World War to help rebuild this country, while others served alongside British troops in the First and Second World Wars. “They have paid their taxes, their national insurance and have contributed so much more to our society. “They are effectively citizens of this country who have been wrongfully put in detention, denied healthcare under the NHS and, in some cases, deported in error. It is a disgrace.” Officials are trawling files to see if anyone has been wrongly deported. PRIME MINISTER SAYS ‘SORRY’ Theresa May has apologised to Caribbean leaders over the treatment of members of the so-called “Windrush generation” who have been threatened with deportation after decades living in the UK. At talks in Number 10, the Prime Minister said she was “genuinely sorry” for the anxiety that had been caused and that she wanted to dispel the idea that the Government was seeking to clamp down on citizens from the region. Mrs May said: “I want to apologise to you today. “Because we are genuinely sorry for any anxiety that has been caused.”