SUCH stories this week of gross ill treatment.

The news has been filled with tales of the Windrush generation: British residents of Caribbean birth who have lived here for decades suddenly being threatened with deportation. Appalling details about elderly grandparents away to visit relatives in Jamaica and not being allowed back to the UK, so being severed from children and grandchildren, homes and jobs.

In the US, a video of two young black men arrested and detained for the crime of sitting quietly in a Starbucks store. Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson were waiting for a business associate in Philadelphia’s Tony Rittenhouse Square neighbourhood.

They were asked to leave and, when the 23-year-olds remained seated with the explanation that they were early for a meeting, police were called and the men taken away in handcuffs while white customers expressed disbelief.

The Windrush stories have generated almost universal condemnation because they are sympathetic. These are people who came to Britain when the country was recovering from war and were determined to help rebuild. They are people who have worked all their lives, paid their taxes, created family ties and contributed to the country.

It is reminiscent of the Gurkha Justice Campaign. Of course those men should be allowed to settle in Britain, they fought for the country and are clearly deserving.

The left is outraged at the Tories for the treatment of these people and the right is outraged just the same. The case is clear cut, there is right and wrong. The government has been caught on the hop and is moving to put systems in place - a dedicated team, a telephone hotline - to demonstrate it is trying to put things right.

Yet Theresa May is has only apologised because her immigration policies have impacted people to whom this country is in debt, not because her immigration policies are vindictive.

Starbucks, similarly, is bang to rights. These were two young entrepreneurial men waiting to take part in a business meeting. Decent, articulate, behaving graciously in the face of gross ill treatment.

Company CEO Kevin Johnson met with Mr Nelson and Mr Robinson to apologise in person. Mr Johnson has announced that 8000 coffee shops across the US will close on an afternoon in May for 175,000 staff to undertake racial-bias training.

The case is clear cut, there is right and wrong.

It is telling how quickly we feel we must justify our defence of people who face injustice. The Windrush stories present a glut of fine, deserving people. Mr Nelson and Mr Robinson are two easy heroes - attractive and upstanding.

Before we found out their backgrounds, at the start of the story's spread across social media, I noticed people rush to provide the young men with a narrative of respectability. A photograph of one of the pair in a suit did the rounds. Talk of their professional work was passed from Tweet to Tweet.

The prevailing narrative is, "These are good people, so why is this happening?" And that's a valid and understandable point.

It does, though, speak to how far from fair and equitable we are in attitudes towards minority groups and how much verbal labour is needed to persuade those who are anti-immigration or suspicious of ethnic communities or who are racist that everyone deserves equal treatment.

Ultimately it doesn't matter whether a Windrush citizen has children or a good job - they are still British. It doesn't matter whether a young black man in a coffee shop has a business meeting or not.

The problem is punitive and spiteful immigration reforms, not the individual's contribution to society. The problem is deeply embedded racial bias that sees young black men brutalised by the police and marginalised by society.

Part of the discomfort of watching the Starbucks video is seeing two young men be utterly compliant in the face of appalling discrimination because they are afraid they may be shot if they are not.

There are thousands of immigrants living with fear or instability who may not have claim to respectability or obvious sympathy but do have claim to fair and just treatment. A narrative that divides people into deserving and undeserving, while well meaning, unwittingly sees liberal values add credence to the type of right-wing views that allow a government to create a "hostile environment" immigration policy or allows racism to go unchecked.

Immigrants and young black men deserve equal treatment because that is right, and for no other reason.