Hostile Environment for EU citizens same as for Windrush generation

Letter to Editor of "The Guardian"

Dear Sir,
I can fully understand the impact of the Home Office's hostile environment on the Windrush generation ("Rudd tells MPs: we were wrong" 17/4/16) especially when,with the passage of time, documentation which had never earlier been required disappears and suddenly elderly hard-working and often long retired British citizens are asked to account for everything they have done over the past 60 years.
This same hostile environment is now being visited on vulnerable EU citizens who have been here legally for several decades without any need to account for their activities other than they have been living and working here and bringing up families. Now, disregarding all their current rights as EU citizens at a time when the UK is still a member of the EU, many Poles and other EU citizens have been faced with internment in detention centres, deportations, their children's UK citizenship revoked and their right to free NHS treatment challenged. It is not always possible to have these measures reversed in time.
With the new system for registering settled status and temporary status under way senior Home Office staff have been promising us a "culture change" for EU citizens. I do not doubt their good intentions but I very much fear their earnest recognition of their current toxic work culture and negative attitude to foreign applicants is probably too late to prevent seasoned Home Office officials further down the line interpreting the complex byzantine immigration rules in their own way even when faced with the eventual terms set out in the Withdrawal Agreement.
Following the recent revelations about the treatment of former Commonwealth citizens I remain very sceptical.
Yours faithfully

Polish Saturday Schools in UK give proud Polish children a chance to prosper in UK

On 2nd April the Guardian printed an article headed "Polish schools in UK accused of links to far-right associates.

This is grossly unfair. Polish Saturday schools have a long and proud tradition in the UK ever since they were set up in the 1940s for children of Polish political emigres stranded here after the War. Currently there are over 150 such schools in the UK serving both the grandchildren and great children of those emigres as well as the new diaspora following Poland's entry into the EU. These schools vary in size and resources and they teach Polish children to have a pride in their parents' country of origin by learning the language, customs, history and geography, These schools respect the British attitude to tolerance of other minorities and prepare their pupils to live and prosper in a multicultural society, especially as older children are given the possibility to sit GCSE and A level exams and thus add an extra subject to their CV.

While accepting that currently the political polarisation within Poland has led to the radicalisation of some young Poles arriving recently in the UK this is not something that Saturday schools are in a position to monitor and to check the background of their children's parents. However the Polish Education Committee which has responsibility for 120 of these schools would be happy to accept any Home Office guidance on this issue as the lines between pride in your country of origin and a nationalist ideology can sometimes be blurred.