Among the myriad complications the UK woke up to on June 24, 2016, was one that had largely been disregarded by the Leave campaign. Come Brexit, what would happen to European citizens already living in the UK? The most basic challenge was to understand how many EU citizens were in the country, as there is no official record or registry. The Migration Observatory, an independent organisation based at the University of Oxford, estimates that there are around 3.7 million EU citizens residing in the UK. If that number is correct, registering all of them by the March 29, 2021, deadline would require the Home Office to process 5,000 applications per day. That’s more than three every minute. The solution to this problem of scale? The Home Office has designed a mobile app.
On June 22, 2017, prime minister Theresa May announced that European nationals in the UK would be granted ‘settled status’. This guarantees those with five years of continuous residence in the UK their current working rights, access to healthcare and benefits. They will, however, lose their right to vote in local elections, to leave the UK for extended periods,the protection of the EU Court of Justice, and their right to bring family members will be restricted. Those with less than five years residency will be granted temporary status to stay until they reach the five-year threshold (although it's unclear what their rights will be in the meantime). All must make an application for this revised status and pay a sum the government promised would be no higher than the price of a passport, which is £72. European nationals with permanent residency or indefinite leave to remain must apply for 'settled status', but their application will be free of charge.
Before Brexit, a European citizen applying for permanent residency had to submit an 85-page application. The app is meant to condense the process of applying for 'settled status' into no more than twenty minutes. Developed by Accenture, BJSS, Capgemini, Deloitte Digital, PA Consulting and Worldreach, the digital tool will go live in late 2018, according to the Home Office. The platform, which is also accessible via desktop and tablet, will remain open until June 30, 2021, to give applicants time to register.
Francis, a European national who took part in user research with the Home Office – his name has been changed as he signed a non-disclosure agreement – says the app is “quite straightforward”. At the session he attended, those testing the product were handed a Samsung Android phone and asked to enter basic information (name, nationality, email address, national insurance number, UK home address) and to declare any criminal convictions: the app then matches this information with HMRC records. “Then it asked me to take a selfie and to scan my passport,” Francis said, “so they match the picture.” Users are supposed to be informed immediately of their application's result, but there have been significant glitches in the system thus far.
In April 2018, the first user testing sessions found that the app would not work on iOS, as Apple doesn't enable technology that can scan the chips found on modern passports. More than half the UK’s adult population uses an iPhone.
“It’s a massive problem”, says Nicolas Hutton, co-chair of the3million, an advocacy group for EU citizens’ rights. “The majority of people won’t be able to use the app to apply.” Instead, Hutton says, people whose smartphones don’t read chips would have to send their passport to the Home Office. The Home Office, which suggested that applicants could “use someone else’s smartphone” to get round the problem, has claimed that it will hire a thousand case workers solely to process ‘settled status’ applications. However, at the time of writing, the hiring has yet to start. Hutton thinks this number isn't sufficient, as most EU citizens will want to apply as soon as the app goes live: “at the beginning, how will they process 20,000 applications a day?”
Although the Home Office confirmed to WIRED that there would be ‘non-digital’ means of registration, and “support for vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children and families, victims of domestic violence and those with English language difficulties”, details have yet to be announced. Bugs in the app are a major concern for EU citizens in the UK: a glitch in the algorithm could seriously impact lives. Francis worries about the app’s facial recognition system: “What happens if the app doesn't match my face with my passport and denies my settled status?” he asks.
The3million estimates that as many as ten per cent of applications could be wrongly denied, which would affect 370,000 people. If an application is mistakenly rejected, the applicant can appeal by sending documents to the Home Office. Currently, an appeal for a rejected permanent residency application can take up to six months." It is unclear whether denied applicants will be able to work in the UK while they appeal the rejection. (The Home Office deflected a direct question on the matter when WIRED asked them). “If I can't work because of their mistake, I can lose my mortgage. My life could be destroyed so easily because of the app’s mistake,” Francis says.
Some EU nationals already distrust the Home Office. In 2017, the government announced that EU citizens would be fingerprinted, registered by their employer, and given a special form of ID – measures that were all deemed discriminatory and abandoned shortly after being discussed. Last April, Amber Rudd, then Home Secretary, promised that using the app would be “as easy as shopping on L.K. Bennett’s website”. A week later, she resigned over the Windrush scandal, in which the Home Office had wrongly deported thousands of citizens after destroying the documentation that proved their nationality. EU citizens now fear there may be a similar outcome related to Brexit.
With the app being developed by third-party companies, data protection is another concern: they will have full access to EU citizens’ personal information, including national insurance numbers, tax details and convictions.
There was no payment option in the version of the app used in the testing sessions, although the final app will include this functionality. The exact price of the application, just like the date of the launch, is unknown. The app’s roll-out – an exact date has yet to be confirmed by the Home Office, but it's expected in October – could coincide with another significant milestone for the UK's departure from the EU: the parliamentary vote on the final Brexit deal, on which the 'settled status' offer itself depends. Because nothing is agreed, until everything is agreed.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
