Freedom of movement in the UK will end on 31 December, 2020 – the date on which the transition period finishes. EU citizens will need a visa in order to migrate to the UK. Those who currently live in Britain will need to get pre-settled or settled status. Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna (University of Wolverhampton) explains which groups of EU citizens will be particularly vulnerable to losing their immigration status and becoming liable to deportation.
Starting on 1 January 2021, after the Brexit transition period ends, mobility of EU citizens will be regulated together with other foreigners by new Immigration Rules. The Immigration Bill will introduce a points-based immigration system whereby the candidates will need a job offer at an appropriate skill level, meet a £25,600 salary threshold, and know English. Factors that will give additional points will be a job on the shortage occupation list, and a PhD. If these requirements remain unchanged when the points-based system becomes operative, many new migrants wishing to work in the UK will have no choice but be undocumented.
The status of EU citizens who currently live in the UK and of the EU ‘newcomers’ who will migrate after the transition period will differ. The former should get either settled or pre-settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), which requirements and legal consequences have been previously described on this blog. During the current public health crisis, the telephone helpline for the EUSS enquiries was closed and documents were not accepted by post for over a month. Although these disruptions have complicated the application process, the deadline for submission has not been changed and remains 30 June 2021.
Only time will tell if the lack of this will lead to deportations. The Home Office is increasingly targeting the EU citizens with hostile environment and not even the national lockdown has stopped them from deporting 35 Polish nationals in April. UK policy toward the EU citizens who fail to secure the new status may depend on the future economic and political situation, which during a crisis may become more hostile. In the following sections, I explain which groups will become particularly vulnerable under the EUSS and new regulations. Although politicians have been giving contradictory answers, when asked if EU citizens who do not secure a new status might be deported, the Home Office secretary has recently confirmed that they will become unauthorized after June 2021.
Rejected applications
Incorrect applications in the EUSS may lead to refusal of (pre-)settled status. Individuals who deliberately provide false or misleading information or documents, or on behalf of whom such documents are provided, may be rejected. For instance, using false documents to demonstrate continuous five years in the UK could be classified as misleading information.
All adult applicants are required to provide information about criminal convictions in the UK and overseas. The Home Office checks all applicants against the UK Police National Computer and the overseas convictions are expected to be declared. For individuals with prior prosecutions, which previously were not a cause for removal, applying to the EUSS may result in deportation. The Home Office caseworkers are instructed to refer such cases to Immigration Enforcement. Therefore, even during the transition period, the EUSS can potentially create a group of newly deportable EU citizens.
The Home Office has proudly announced that only as little as 0.01% applications are refused and demonstrated that it complies with the official policy of ‘looking to grant status, not for reasons to refuse’. However, in March 2020, 9% of the applications still awaited conclusion. More complicated cases of applicants with criminal convictions cause the backlog. While in January 2020 only six applications were officially rejected, a month later this number grew to 300. In February 2020, the Home Office picked up the complicated cases and started rejecting them. The number of successful appeals is not known.
People who do not apply under the EUSS
It is difficult to estimate how many people have not yet applied to the EUSS, because the number of EU citizens in the UK is not known and the Home Office publishes information about the number of applications and not applicants. Hence, it will be impossible to know the exact number of people who will not have applied for the new status and who will remain in the UK after the EUSS closes on 30 June 2021.
A criminal record may be an important factor contributing to abstaining from applying. Applicants with an arrest warrant, European Arrest Warrant or unspent convictions can be easily detained by the police, as the application to EUSS provides the Home Office information about criminal convictions, personal details, face scans and current pictures.
Under the lockdown, the application to the EUSS has become more difficult. Lacking a biometric passport or a national ID card is a serious obstacle. Not all the EU member states issue national ID cards with a chip and older passports do not have it either. These applicants can post their documents to the Home Office, and individuals who do not have a document at all can apply in paper form (provided by the Home Office only upon individual request, usually with delay). However, the EUSS Resolution Centre helpline was closed between March and early May and paper documents were not accepted, which has caused a lag in processing the applications. Under the physical distancing measures, getting a new passport may be impossible. Before the lockdown, this had already been a challenge for poorer and digitally excluded people because of having to apply online for a consulate appointment, passport fees, and travel expenses. The situation of children living with a single parent is even more complicated should the other parent not consent to the passport application.
People who will lose their status
Pre-settled status will expire after two years spent overseas and settled status after five years. EU citizens’ enjoy the EU Freedom of Movement in their family and professional life and some may not even be aware of the immobility the new status involves. Current travel restrictions caused by COVID-19 can also contribute to unplanned, longer, absences of EU citizens from the UK and breaks in continuous residence, but the Home Office has failed to address this problem.
The people who will not be able to update their status from the temporary pre-settled to the indefinite settled one will be another vulnerable EU group in the post-transition UK. 41% of the people who have applied under the EUSS must re-apply in order to stay in the UK for more than 5 years. It is the applicant who must demonstrate continuous 5-year residence should the information automatically retrieved by the Home Office do not reflect the correct length of their stay. EU citizens often fail to prove a five-year residence and thus are only given the pre-settled status. Stijn Smismans writes that, ‘(t)hese people are likely to face similar problems when applying for settled status later on. There is a risk that all the more difficult cases will resurface within five years’. Children and carers who joined family members but never planned to work, rough sleepers, and people who worked in the shadow economy, or were unemployed for long periods, will be especially impacted by this.
Pre-settled status holders who cannot upgrade to settled status because they lack documentation, are digitally excluded, or simply forget to apply will likely become unauthorized migrants in the UK. For instance, rough sleepers often change telephone numbers and do not have an e-mail account, which are necessary to access their on-line EUSS profile, as well as for the purpose of upgrading pre-settled to settled status. Furthermore, the Home Office may withdraw the financial assistance provided to most vulnerable EU citizens before the pre-settled statuses expire.
By the end of the transition period, convictions that did not qualify an individual for deportation should not be a basis for refusal of settled and pre-settled status. However, the pre-settled status holders who will be upgrading to settled status will be evaluated under the UK criminality test from 2021 onward. As a result, individuals who are now legally living and working in the UK will be subject to criminality and security check which overnight may make them deportable. It is also to be expected that the EU citizens will now be deported on the basis of general prevention and not on the basis of forward-looking assessment, as it is currently the case for non-EU citizens.
New EU migrants
Settled and pre-settled status holders will be able to bring their close family members into the UK. EU citizens who will not be joining their family members in the UK will be able to enter visa-free for up to six months but longer stays will require a leave to enter/remain. Those who do not qualify in the points-based system may still want to use the visa-free entry in order to remain and work in Britain. Obviously, upon overstaying the allowed length of visit they will become unauthorized. New Immigration Rules will be laid out later in 2020, but it is possible that the EU citizens working without a permit may be criminalized, as it happens now with non-EU citizens.
Conclusion
Vulnerable EU citizens often do not speak good English and do not understand the EUSS. If not duly supported when applying, they are likely to be granted pre-settled instead of settled status. In future, they will be upgrading to settled status under different economic and political circumstances. Refused applications will not necessarily lead to automatic deportation of applicants, as this would be expensive and overwhelm the UK immigration detention system. Instead, individuals denied the new residence status might either remain as undocumented or will leave the UK, self-deporting themselves for fear of prosecution. However, the Home Office may try to deport more EU citizens, for instance, to relieve the UK economy, disrupted by COVID-19 and Brexit. The EUSS gives the UK authorities access to personal details, biometric data, history of contribution to the fiscal system and criminal record of over three million non-UK citizens.
A significant share of EU citizens living in Britain has benefited from European Freedom of Movement for a relatively short time – Poles for fifteen years, Romanians for just six. Before that, numerous people from Central and Eastern Europe were undocumented in the UK, after having crossed the border as tourists or students. The memories of those who had been forcibly returned upon crossing the UK border or apprehended in immigration raids are still vivid in some communities. After the end of the Brexit transition period, people from poorer ‘new member states’ may be more likely to continue to migrate to the UK, despite not having proper immigration status.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor LSE.
The BRAD project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 786490.
At the risk of having another post removed simply for correcting an article, here’s a few facts:
1) No-one should live in a country where they possess only a basic knowledge of the language.
2) The ‘hostile environment’ applies to illegals, and not to those who came here through legal channels.
3) Many of those who sleep rough are doing so to avoid the authorities.
4) Anyone who is living in poverty in a foreign country really has no need to remain there.
5) FOM rules were originally intended to refer to workers ie those coming to work. They were not designed for those shopping round for benefits.
6) Foreigners have been on notice since 2015 that the UK was considering its EU membership, and in 2016 the Referendum result told everyone that ‘things would change’. That’s four years in which to learn the language and read the official pronouncements. Anyone failing to do so deserves to be removed just for the implied insult to the nation.
7) Many countries operate a system of not allowing criminals to cross their border. Why should the UK not do the same?
8) Central Europeans who came here last century may have entered the UK illegally. If they did, then they should face deportation, regardless of the length of time or that their country is now an EU member state.
9) Anyone who outstays their visa should be deported.
10) If having an email address is a requirement, then those who believe they have a genuine right to be here would complete this simple task. There is no excuse for not having one.
11) Any deliberately false information supplied on an application form for anything should invalidate the application.
12) Anyone who doesn’t bother to check the requirements of their settled status or decides that the conditions don’t apply to them deserves to be barred from re-entry.
13) The UK cannot be blamed if other countries are not issuing biometric documents.
Excellent comment well said.
I know some people who have moved here from EU member countries, they work hard, they pay their own way, they contribute to this country and its economy and, like me, they are sick and tired of idle migrants who contribute nothing to this country, refuse to learn English and expect to be spoon fed in every way, being described as “vulnerable” and “victims”
So I gather from all that that if for example some British OAP has moved to Poland to live with her daughter, but hasn’t actually managed to learn the language, earn a living or learn enough about computing to get an E-Mail address, she should be given her marching orders?
I have no idea what arrangements Poland makes for non-EU citizens wishing to relocate there.
If you really want the correct info, you should contact the relevant embassy,
I’m not sure if OAPs would be earning a living (the clue is in the name) so I would include that in your enquiries.
Please don’t get back to me on this, as my interest in Poland’s immigration policies is matched only by my interest in the 1948 Davis Cup quarter-finals.
“Please don’t get back to me on this, as my interest in Poland’s immigration policies is matched only by my interest in the 1948 Davis Cup quarter-finals.” So when for example you say in Point 1 “No-one should live in a country where they possess only a basic knowledge of the language” this doesn’t apply to Brits living abroad? Perhaps you think we should just S H O U T L O U D L Y A N D S L O W L Y and expect the bloody natives to understand us?
I would certainly hope the British government has rather more understanding and interest in the situation of Brits living abroad, whether or not they currently have jobs, E-Mail addresses and the ability to learn a language, than you do. It should, for example, be aware that if it behaves unjustly to citizens of other countries living within its own borders, then those other countries might well retaliate.
“It should, for example, be aware that if it behaves unjustly to citizens of other countries living within its own borders, then those other countries might well retaliate”
What do you class as unjust? Not providing translators at cost to the taxpayers, not providing every piece of informtion in every language on the planet (just in case any of the EU “citizens” are not originally from the country they now live in). at more cost to the taxpayer, providing counsellors to every person who becomes distressed at having to think for themselves, be proactive, learn English, provide their own interpreter, find someone who can translate every piece of written guidance and so on?
Thankfully we do not look like returning to those times in the near future, so maybe you would like to put your hands in your pocket and help these “vulnerable” people
I think it would be unjust to deport the OAP in the example I mentioned. Do you? Does Gary Schofield? Please answer “yes” or “no” …
Actually there is not that much disagreement between us. I think people should normally make an effort to learn the language of the country they live in. I think people should not be allowed to shop around for benefits. I think guests in a country who persist in committing serious crimes should not expect to be allowed to stay there. I don’t think the requirements to obtain an E-Mail address, borrow an Android phone or obtain proper identity papers to get settled status are, in the vast majority of cases, particularly onerous. I don’t think the majority of EU citizens will think so either. But it seems to me there needs to be more flexibility and more resources to deal with hard cases, like retirees supported by family members.
Hi Gary, I think you meant “No” and that it would not be unjust for the Polish government to deport a retired OAP living with her daughter in Poland without knowledge of the language or an E-Mail address. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.
I think if all countries were to deport people in such circumstances it would create a unnecessary hardship for all concerned. If one British pensioner living with her daughter in Poland and one Polish pensioner living with her daughter in Britain were both deported, the end result would be to break up two families and put extra care on the social care systems of both countries.
‘”“Hi Gary, I think you meant “No”….”
Your choice of words proves that you aren’t sure.’
Yes, I wasn’t entirely sure. I think stupid people like me with (as you say) a single-digit IQ and who are incapable of reason would find it much easier to argue with someone who, when asked a question expecting the answer “Yes” or “No” would answer either “Yes” or “No” or “I don’t know” and not with a series of insults. But if people of high intelligence and the ability to reason like you would prefer the series of insults, I think I’d better stay out of further discussion. My guess is that most readers of this blog will be quite able to draw their own conclusions. You can have the last word now, if you like. Good evening.
Conclusion: The government, the Home Office and the police will be doing their job more or less as promised, or, at least, the aforementioned have a medium paid for by the taxpayers/the state whose academically trained experts will let the taxpayers/citizens know what will be happening some unspecified time in the future, if sad taxpayers/citizens believe it, that is, if, indeed, that it is going to happen. In the meantime, the French navy is running a ferry service across the channel for illegal migrants. There is another angle, however. The HO has always had its own reasons for running what often looks like a shambles. Around 1997 I was told by someone who didn’t give their name, that 6 million N insurance numbers had been given out (away?, sold on the black market?) inappropriately; that’s why I couldn’t get one, I was told. What a racket!
“many new migrants wishing to work in the UK will have no choice but be undocumented”
They would have the choice to work legally in an EU country instead.