In the same way persons from the Caribbean came to the UK decades ago only to suffer at the hands of the Home Office’s hostile environment many years later, thousands of children of EU nationals risk becoming a new “Windrush generation”.
An estimated 900,000 EU national children are resident in the UK with about 285,000 born in the country. The Home Office estimates that between 10% and 20% of all applicants may be vulnerable and unable to provide documentary evidence of their time in the UK. These include children in foster care, care homes, and others from unstable families, victims of domestic violence or children whose parents will not or cannot provide them with paperwork to evidence their time in the country, all of whom could slip through the net of the new Home Office registration scheme for EU nationals after Brexit.
Children who are unable to prove the length of their stay in the UK could also be penalised and be awarded “pre-settled status”, a category for EU citizens who have ben in the country for fewer than five years. This designation could create additional problems for these children in the future.
About 5,000 children of EU nationals are presently separated from their parents and in care. Children’s rights organisations are calling on the government to compel local authorities to identify these children now in order to get their settled status regularised before the cut-off point in 2020 or 2021. In trial runs, it was noted that one in five children the charity assisted did not have the necessary documents to support their applications and more than half needed legal advice.
Far from being as easy as “shopping at LK Bennett” as claimed by former home secretary Amber Rudd, it was found that the online registration process for settled status took an average of between an hour and an hour and a half to complete, and where technical or documentary evidential problems arose, the process took up to 10 hours to complete.
Children or young people who may have committed crimes could also face additional problems even if they were born in the UK due to the good character requirement although the Home Office has said that only those children with serious criminal offences will be considered as potentially ineligible but that it will consider each applicant on a case-by-case basis.
The cost of an application may also be prohibitive for some as many children who are eligible for British nationality may lack the financial resources to establish their citizenship. Rights groups would like the government to waive the £1,012 fee for all EU eligible children.
The Home Office has promised that no child will be left behind and is working in partnership with vulnerable group representatives, local authorities and other experts to ensure every eligible person is registered.
