The film cuts to news footage at the time. Little do they anticipate the Kafkaesque nightmare to come. Anthony promises to visit just as soon as he gets a passport. His mother Mama Lou, who retired 10 years previously to her place of birth in Jamaica after working 30 years in Britain’s National Health Service, sings Happy Birthday on Skype. The affection between Anthony and his partner Janet is clear. There is good food, reggae music and the company of friends. The year is 2016, the place Edmonton in North London, a family gathering. The drama then introduces us to the characters. In 2012, David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government formed a ministerial team that became known as the “Hostile Environment Working Group.” In 2007, the Labour government first used the term “hostile environment” when discussing the polices to be adopted regarding undocumented migrant workers.

The opening sequence presents some bald facts in regard to the anti-migrant agenda pursued by all of Britain’s main parties. Thompson, Anthony Bryan’s half-brother, wrote the script. Sitting in Limbo, a 90-minute drama, was directed by young filmmaker Stella Corradi. According to the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, 50,000 people were left in limbo, without regularised residency status. Draconian legislation passed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition in 2012 demanded proof of residency to obtain healthcare, open a bank account, get a job or rent a home. The 1971 Immigration Act granted post-war Commonwealth immigrants leave to remain in the UK, but did not issue them any paperwork or keep records. Migrants from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, came to be known as the Windrush generation, after the ship MV Empire Windrush, which landed 500 Jamaicans at Tilbury, Essex on June 22, 1948. Between 19, workers from the colonies were invited to the “Mother Country” to answer the labour shortage in the UK. The year was 1965 and he was eight years old. Like many migrants of his generation, Anthony arrived in Britain from Jamaica on his mother’s passport. Anthony had lived legally in the UK for 53 years. The BBC’s Sitting in Limbo is a dramatisation of the real-life story of Anthony Bryan, who was caught up in the anti-migrant Windrush Scandal and almost deported.

Sitting in limbo