Hundreds of thousands of European migrants who are eligible to stay in the UK after Brexit may struggle to provide official documentation to support their application, Oxford academics have warned.
The Migration Observatory, based at the university, claimed EU nationals will face difficulties showing they have been living in Britain before departure from the bloc in March 2019.
For example, people without bank accounts or leases may have only informal proof of address such as letters from friends.
The research group’s director Madeleine Sumption said: “Most EU citizens should have little trouble getting their status resolved if the simplified system the Government has proposed goes ahead.
“But there are still big questions about what will happen to the minority who don’t have official evidence that they have been living in the UK.
“It’s impossible to estimate exactly how many this will be. But even if it is only a few per cent of the total, the numbers of applicants affected would run into the tens or even the hundreds of thousands.”
She said the registration process for EU citizens “will be prone to controversy”, adding: “Any indication of fraud would be quick to hit the headlines, but if the burden of proof is high and eligible people lose their legal status, this will also undermine trust in the system.”
EU citizens who arrive by March 29 2019 and have been continuously and lawfully living in the UK for five years will be able to apply to stay indefinitely by getting “settled status”.
Those who have been in the country for less than five years before the exit date will be able to apply to remain until they have reached the five-year threshold.
Officials are working to establish a new system from scratch to process potentially more than three million applications from EU citizens and their families.
The agreement struck by the UK and the EU last week makes clear that the arrangements will be “transparent, smooth and streamlined”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel