Article Image

IPFS News Link • United Kingdom

'I've been here 50 years': the EU citizens struggling for the right to stay in Britain

• https://www.theguardian.com, By Amelia Gentleman

In early May, Doris Ratnam sat at her kitchen table, trying to scan her German passport with her mobile phone. She was applying for "settled status" in the UK, the new immigration status most of the 3.4 million or so EU nationals living in Britain need to acquire if they want to stay in the country legally after Brexit. Ratnam, who is 72 and has lived in London since arriving as an au pair in 1968, was annoyed that she felt obliged to apply under the scheme to remain more securely in a country she considers her home.

She was flustered by the process of attempting to get her phone to suck all her personal details out of her passport. Something was not working, and we sat for 20 minutes in near silence as she moved the phone slowly over the cover of the passport, as shown in a reassuring Home Office Youtube video, trying to get it to read the chip hidden inside the document.


JonesPlantation