One-year
countdown to apply to the EU Settled Status
There
is still one year to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme. EU citizens and their
families have one year from today until 30 June 2021 to apply for settled status
and Europa Welcome is here to help!
Over
the last year 872 people accessed our Europa Welcome service at Asylum
Welcome. We supported 565 people to apply for settled or pre-settled status. 350
EU citizens who submitted applications with our support received positive
decisions from the Home Office.
Our
remarkable team of eight volunteers includes four OISC EUSS Level 1 qualified
volunteers who were all trained and accredited during the last year and four
trained to the OISC EUSS L1 are now waiting to be accredited.
If
you would like our help all you need is your passport/ID and evidence of your
residence. If you need help to apply, contact us: europawelcome@asylum-welcome.org
and we’ll be more than happy to help you. To find out more, please visit: https://www.asylum-welcome.org/europa-welcome.
Late
last year a lovely elderly woman who received her settled status with the
support of our wonderful Europa Welcome volunteers felt so grateful and
pleased that she very generously sent us a donation to thank us for helping
her, and as her contribution to support AW helping others. You can read her lovely
hand-written note in the image above. It is a lot harder for elderly EEA
citizens who might have been living here for a long time never having to worry about
their immigration status suddenly finding themselves having to prove their
residence to apply to get their status and become legal residents because of
Brexit. That is hard for them – and for many of us - to grasp. There is also
the issue of difficulty the elderly can have with providing a digital proof of
status rather than a residence card. We have found it is disproportionately
harder for the elderly to prove their EUSS status online digitally due to age
and related health and other problems.
For
example, another client had lived in the UK since the 70s, having moved over
here when she and her British husband got married. She had become quite worried
about Brexit and what it would mean, to the point where she was having sleepless
nights and anxiety attacks. When she came to see us we discussed her situation
and her rights, and established that she had been given ILR shortly after her
arrival here. However, she was still concerned about her situation and so we helped
her complete and submit her application. When the screen displayed that she
would be considered for Settled Status, she began to cry because she was
so relieved. She has since been given her Settled Status.
Another
client was in her 80s, and had moved to the UK in the 1950s. She barely used
technology and so she would not have been able to complete the process herself
(we posted her the Home Office letter as she doesn't even use email with ease).
We explained the process to her, and as she had worked her whole life, there
was a good match with HMRC and DWP records. She has since been given her Settled
Status, and (as with the client above) commented that it was a weight off her
shoulders as she had been worried about her future. She explicitly said that
she would not have been able to complete the application without us. She says
she is now going to apply for British citizenship.
These
cases exemplify just how concerned people are about their rights, and combined
with an absence of technological knowledge, are but a couple of important reasons
these clients came to us needing help. Cases like this highlight our concerns
about the lack of a physical document to prove status, as well as the reliance
on technology to complete the process: both of these clients are
well-established in the UK, they have spent their entire adult lives here,
their grasp of language is perfect, and yet without support, they would not
have been able to apply and in theory, would have become illegal from July 2021.