The3Million, a civic organization, denounces “systematic failings” in the United Kingdom’s official settlement system for community diaspora living in the country prior to Brexit. This put at risk their rights and access subsidies as recognized by the Union Withdrawal Agreement.
Since Brexit, more than 5.4 million Europeans are now British citizens. This figure exceeds initial estimates of three millions residents who are entitled to so-called “settlement status” (hence the name for the grassroots movement). It has not peaked. The official deadline for applying for residency in the country was June 30, 2020. However, the Ministry of the Interior is still processing forms.
Kuba Jablonowski (a researcher at University of Exeter), said that it was impossible to know how many requests were actually made at a meeting of Foreign Journalists Association. On May 31, more than 6.6 million applications had already been submitted (more that half a million beyond the deadline), but it’s not known how many people did not manage to submit their applications or have fallen out of compliance with the norm. . Nicolas Hatton, cofounder of The3Million, criticizes the flawed system. He also notes that there is no evidence that “our fears weren’t unfounded.”
The slope curve for a government response has fallen from 600,000. a year ago, to 245,700 now. About half of cases are delayed between six and twelve months. Many have yet to receive the “application certificate”, which is necessary to rent a house, open a bank account, or apply for a job. Due to the large number of complaints, the supervisory authority for citizens’ rights (IMA) opened an investigation. The Government has been sued by this independent entity regarding the precarious situation faced by the 2.5 million members of the community who were granted a temporary residence permit.
Dahaba Ali Hussen has revealed during the act for denunciation the series of “bureaucratic mistakes” made by Immigration when reviewing his case. She is from Somalia and Dutch descent and has lived in the UK since childhood. She studied at Cambridge and worked for the BBC and other British media outlets. However, she was denied settlement status three more times, as she recalls at the press conference. Andreea Dumitrache was her Romanian colleague. Her documentation was in order, but she was denied entry to a flight from Mallorca, London.
According to The3Million, the hardest hit citizens of central Europe have been those who have had to deal with bureaucratic hurdles since Brexit. The IMA intervened to help those who applied for a residence permit for non European relatives. The unions, on the other hand reproach the Executive of Boris Johnson’s failure to follow the Court of Justice of the EU which revalidates the right of the community to receive state subsidies and a temporary residence permit. Luke Piper, director of strategy and lawyer at The3Million, denounces “The government systematically breaches the Brexit agreement about citizenship.”
