Europeans will be able to move to the U.K. before the Brexit process ends, but they will have to got through an application process to remain there—as if the proverbial Nebraskan in New York suddenly had to get permission to stay. And Remigi notes that, like all applications, this one “can be turned down.”

The uncertainty is already showing real consequences. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics revealed last month that EU net migration (the difference between those entering the U.K. and those leaving it) has fallen to its lowest level in five years—a “Brexodus” driven by a decreased number of EU nationals coming to work in the U.K. and an increased number leaving. Bohn said that of her group’s 37,000 members, more than half are considering leaving the U.K. “People can’t plan for the future,” she told me, noting that while they aren’t “sitting on packed bags,” they are looking into contingency plans. “I’ve lived here for nearly 30 years, I’ve got a child at a British school who came here at five weeks, I have British friends. I don’t just pack my bags, but I’ve been looking at jobs in Berlin just in case.”

And it goes both ways. Redfern Jon Barrett, a British citizen who has lived in Germany since 2010, is one of thousands of Britons applying for German citizenship in the aftermath of the Brexit vote. Though Barrett has lived in Germany long enough to apply, he told me that isn’t the case for a number of his British friends in the country. Germany, like many other EU countries, requires that applicants have at least five years of legal residency in the country before they can be eligible for permanent residency. “Many of them have been here maybe two years, maybe three,” he said. “What’s going to happen to them in the meantime? … I thought we would at least know what was going to happen to us.”

Apart from negotiators in London and Brussels, there is one other body that could have a say: the European Court of Justice. Last month, an Amsterdam district court asked the EU high court to consider a case brought by five British nationals living in the Netherlands seeking to retain their EU citizenship after Brexit. Michaela Benson, a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London and the leader of BrExpats, a U.K. in a Changing Europe-funded research project focusing on the rights of British residents in EU, said that if the high court deems EU citizenship irremovable, it could have major implications for Britons everywhere. “If it’s successful, it won’t just be about U.K. nationals living in the EU,” she said. “It would be about all U.K. citizens who were, up until the point of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, considered EU nationals. … That could change the game.”

Until then—or until the terms of Brexit are finally agreed—there’s nothing they can do. “We will be in limbo until the very end,” Bohn said, “and that is horrible.”