By Emma McClelland - 28 August 2021
On 31 December 2020, freedom of movement in the UK came to an end. On paper, EU nationals who were here before that date were eligible to apply for status under the EUSS. In reality, those who arrived closest to the deadline still face an uphill battle to access their rights due to difficulties sourcing 'acceptable' residence evidence, as this case study shows.
The luck of the draw
Sofia is afraid. She, her husband and their daughter have been granted pre-settled status. But her eight-year-old son has not. When the decision came, she could hardly comprehend it. She had many questions. "Can he still go to school?" "Will they send him back to Romania?" And, above all, "How could this have happened?"
Sofia, who is just 25, moved to the UK with her family from Romania in 2020. Her husband had arrived earlier in the year and they joined him on 6 December. Arriving in a new country where you don't speak the language is difficult enough, but in the middle of a pandemic, it's even more of a challenge. Despite this, both adults applied to the EUSS, for themselves and for each child.
In June 2021, Sofia contacted us for help with her application. She needed more evidence that her arrival in the UK was before freedom of movement ended. Normally, plane tickets would be acceptable proof, but they didn't have those. They had travelled here by car, taking a ride with someone they met on a Facebook group in order to save money.
Proving your presence
Fortunately, Sofia had attended an induction with a recruitment agency in December and was able to use a document linked to this as proof of residence. However, a week after she received pre-settled status, she was told that her son had not. Her son's application had been linked to his father's, who had also been successful in obtaining status.
The status outcome simply stated that they had failed to provide suitable residence evidence. While Sofia had supplied a birth certificate and a letter from Gheorghe's school, which states he was enrolled in March, neither demonstrated that he had been here in December. Sofia hadn't been able to go to the school in person and register him due to the national lockdown prompted by Covid. A lack of language and digital skills prevented her from completing this process online.
Gheorghe's sister Katrina, who had been in the same situation, was not denied status, causing a great deal of confusion for Sofia who couldn't comprehend that two divergent outcomes could come from two identical applications! The two children had submitted the same evidence - a school letter (from the same school) dated after December 2020 and their birth certificate! We explained that decisions were made on a case-by-case basis by individual Home Office case workers, and that one had clearly used their discretion whereas the other had not.
The balance of probability
With our help, Sofia re-applied for Gheorghe, attaching a cover letter to explain in greater detail what had happened. With input from Seraphus we argued the improbability of an eight-year-old child travelling alone to the UK after the rest of the family have already arrived.
Finding evidence was a struggle as even receipts for clothes purchased in December - already a stretch in terms of evidence - had been lost. We included the school letter, plus the parents' evidence and photographs that they had taken in December 2020. Some of these photos showed the children in a town in South-East England, sitting by local landmarks. Because of smartphones, these pictures are geo-tagged. This means we can prove they were in the area pre-December 31st. We also attached the Home Office's decision letters for Katrina, Sofia and her husband.
An anxious wait
It took a month for Sofia to receive the Certificate of Application (COA) from the Home Office and the wait for a decision is causing her a great deal of stress. Ana-Maria Cirstea, who has been supporting Sofia, explains: "I've talked to her every week in some form since she reapplied. Every time she gets an official looking email she takes a screenshot and sends it to me to ask if it's about the status. She even double checked that she had written the Home Office address in the 'right place' on the envelope when posting Gheorghe's passport. This is the level of worry she's experiencing."
We are hopeful that common sense will prevail and that Gheorghe will be granted status under the EUSS, like the rest of his family, but this is not the only case of its kind. For UK arrivals in late 2020, navigating an unfamiliar bureaucratic system is an uphill struggle, and one where the burden of proof can turn out to be a burden too heavy to bear.
*All names have been changed to protect individuals' anonymity.
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