EU Nationals ‘could struggle to produce documents to support UK residence’

HUNDRED 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, analysis warns.

Academics say some 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 only have informal proof of address such as letters from friends, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.

Its 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 percent 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”.

But the report from the Migration Observatory warns that the Government will face “tricky operational and political questions” as it implements the system.

The current application process for EU citizens seeking permanent residence has been criticised for its complexity and strict requirements, the paper notes.

It acknowledges that the new system will drop some of the more complex requirements, reduce the burden of evidence on individuals and rely where possible on information the Government already holds, such as tax records.

But the research adds that the question of how more complex cases will be addressed is still to be resolved.

It says: “People who were not working or who were working in the cash economy may not have left an official paper trail.”

Complex cases could include people who cannot provide the necessary evidence or who do not apply in the proposed two-year time period because they do not realise they are required to, think they are not eligible or do not speak good enough English to navigate the process, according to the study.