To keep their current working and living rights beyond the Brexit transition, the UK’s 3.7 million European citizens will soon have to apply under the British government’s “settled status” scheme.
Everyone must apply by the December 31, 2020 deadline (that’s 5,000 applications to process every day). Right now, a pilot is open only to EU citizens who have a biometric passport and work for a series of partnering organisations. And most of them will have to use an app.
The app, EU Exit: ID Verification Check, has had a bumpy start: it doesn’t work on iPhones, so EU citizens must use an Android device to apply.
During the first pilot, which opened in August to staff from 12 NHS Trusts and three universities in north-west England, 1,053 EU citizens applied, of which 591 were granted settled status; 333 were granted pre-settled status, the status for EU nationals who have been here less than five years; and “no cases were refused”, a Home Office report specifies (what happened to the other 129 is unclear).
“This has allowed us to get feedback from real applicants so we can make any necessary adjustments”, a Home Office spokesperson says. The second pilot is ongoing: on November 1, staff from more NHS trusts became eligible; on the November 15, it widened to staff in higher education across the country; and from November 29 workers in health and social care have been able to apply, too. The scheme will be open for everyone by March 30, 2019.
Some of the applicants have indeed experienced the “smooth” process the Home Office promised. But others are concerned about the consequences of having an app play an outright crucial role in the scheme – or just about accessing said app to start with.
Ania Remlein, a Polish citizen from Newcastle who moved to the UK in 2011, found the app “incredibly simple to use.” She entered her email address, her phone number, scanned the first page of her passport and make the phone “read” its biometric chip, scanned her face and take a selfie. “This took me around four minutes,” she says. On the Home Office website, she provided her national insurance number and criminal record. “The webpage immediately tells you whether you are eligible for [settled status]”, she says. After she paid the £65 fee, she was told that a decision on her status would be taken shortly. The email announcing she had been granted settled status came less than 24 hours later.
For EU citizens who are computer literate, own a recent Android phone and a biometric passport, have no criminal record and have proof of five years’ UK residence in stable employment, applying to settled status will be easy. But that’s far from everyone.
Anna (not her real name), an Austrian citizen who works in higher education, owns three Android devices, but the app, which is compatible with phones running 2015’s Marshmallow or later, worked on none of them. “I had to buy a new phone”, she says. Virve Enne, a Finnish research scientist at UCL, is also annoyed: “I don’t have an Android [handset], so will need to borrow one from a friend”, she says.
Anna counts herself lucky to be digitally-savvy: “The system is quite high-threshold in terms of the tech skills required”, she says. “Older or less digitally literate people will struggle.” Maike Bohn, a spokesperson for the citizens’ rights group the3million, is worried about the stress being put on tech in the scheme: “What happens when tech fails or isn’t conclusive? If computers don’t find your name or your name is misspelt, people can lose jobs, can’t access their homes.”
Once the scheme is open to all, the Home Office will launch 56 “hubs” at local libraries. The £90 million contract was awarded last May to a French company, Sopra Steria, an outsourcing deal the3million describe as “highly ironic”.
“Surely that money could have gone to local councils who have registries anyway?” Bohn says. “You retrain permanent residence staff, give them guidance for settled status, job done!”
Francesca Cecinati, an Italian research associate at the University of Bath, is among those who tried to apply through the app but quickly encountered a problem: her device doesn’t have the NFC sensor needed to scan her passport with the app. She went to Bristol Central library to look for one of the “library hubs: “They had no clue what I was talking about,” she says. There is no Home Office helpdesk to contact, at least for now.
For people like Cecinati who can’t scan their passport, the scheme will allow for passports to be sent to the Home Office to be checked – which means that EU citizens will find themselves without their ID, awaiting their status, potentially for months on end. They will also be unable to travel, as their national IDs will not be valid at customs after the UK leaves the EU. “I frequently travel outside the country,” Cecinati says. “I cannot get stuck because my passport is in some office, together with another three million passports that need to be processed.”
Those who did receive support from the Home Office found it useful. An Croenen Brutsaert, a Belgian lecturer from Chester who moved in the UK in 1994, applied to settled status in October – the “very first cohort” to do so, she says – and did not use the app. In one of her university building, several Home Office staff members welcomed her, held a short interview with her and made her fill a questionnaire on a computer. “It was over in less than half an hour”, she said. Within a week, an email confirmed her settled status. But she can’t use this email as proof: “I have to follow an online link to prove my settled status, so I have no card, which I find worrying.”
“Settled status” is a digital-only system, linked to the European citizen’s passport number in an electronic database. The Home Office stresses that the app has been designed and tested with security in mind, and continues to monitor the system to protect it against cyberattacks. But will a digital number be enough for EU citizens to prove their rights to landlords and employers?
“That’s a huge issue”, says Maike Bohn from the3million, a Facebook group for EU citizens in the UK. “If you’re a landlord and two people want the flat, one has a British passport and the other says ‘go check my digital settled status number’, who do you rent it to? You need to take real life issues into calculation.”
The Home Office specifies that successful applicants receive “a letter attached to an email communicating the outcome of their application”, but unless they introduce some ID card system to go with the digital number, their carefully planned, smooth scheme might quickly unravel.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
