LONDON — European citizens in the U.K. have the right to stay after Brexit but many fear the system designed to let them prove it may yet let them down.

More than 400,000 eligible citizens from European Economic Area countries and Switzerland have not yet applied for the U.K.’s EU Settlement Scheme, according to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics. The deadline for the scheme, which allows citizens to prove they have the right to continue to live, work and access public services in the U.K. now that Britain has left the EU, is June 30, 2021.

Organizations that help citizens with the process say vulnerable groups, such as older people, low-skilled workers, children and the homeless, may not have access to the digital registration system or may be unaware they need to register.

Even among those who have secured settled status, concern remains that flaws in the system — in particular the lack of physical proof of their status — may mean bureaucratic headaches continue long after Brexit.

The Home Office rejects the concerns and announced this month that more than 3 million EU nationals have successfully applied for settled status.

Home Office Minister Brandon Lewis insists the EU Settlement Scheme provides Europeans in the country with a “secure, digital status which can’t be lost, stolen or tampered with.”

“There is ... plenty of support available across the U.K. for those who need help in applying, including a helpline and face-to-face support, and paper application forms and even home visits for vulnerable people,” a spokesperson said.

Home Office Minister Brandon Lewis declined a request for an interview.

Computer says no

Dimitri Scarlato, a Brexit consultant who helps people apply at the Italian Advice Centre in Islington, has seen how the system can work against the elderly. One of his clients, a 101-year-old Italian, was registered as a 1-year-old baby last month because the Home Office app “cannot scan passports of people whose age goes beyond two digits,” he said.

After further issues with the app and phone calls to the Home Office’s EU Settlement Resolution Centre, officials “took all the details of this gentleman and said they would update the profile by themselves,” Scarlato said. The pair is still waiting for an update.

Even those who have managed to register successfully have little faith in the system. Lewis insists the EU Settlement Scheme provides Europeans in the country with a “secure, digital status which can’t be lost, stolen or tampered with.”

But Maike Bohn, co-founder of The3Million campaign group, which lobbies on behalf of EU citizens in the U.K., argues EU nationals’ profiles could be hacked or accidentally modified by Home Office staff.

Elly Wright, a Dutch national who has lived in the U.K. for 52 years and obtained settled status in August, claims her maiden name was replaced with her married name in her online profile without her consent and her most recent picture replaced by an older image the Home Office had from a previous application.

“They do all these things with your details and you don’t know anything about it unless you keep on checking [your profile] ... Who can tell me that they won’t upload a picture of, who knows, Theresa May?” she said.

Others worry that the lack of a physical document, even once their application has been approved, may make it difficult to prove their status in post-Brexit Britain. Instead of receiving a hard copy of a document, they must log in to the Home Office website and go through multiple steps each time they are required to demonstrate their status to border force officials, landlords and employers, among others.

Eighty-nine percent of the more than 3,000 respondents to a survey conducted by The3Million group said they are not happy with this, and fear being discriminated against. One in 10 said they have already been asked to prove their settled status, even though that proof is not officially required before 2021.

Once the deadline has passed, there will be no way of knowing how many people are in the country illegally and at risk of deportation.

Earlier this month, the government rejected a proposed amendment to the Brexit deal that would have compelled it to provide European nationals with physical proof of their right to stay.

Missed applications

As well as concerns with the system itself, campaigners also worry about missed applications.

The Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium (Coram), a group of NGOs, estimates that at least 450,000 EEA and Swiss national children in the U.K. have not yet applied. This includes children whose parents have not applied themselves, or have not realized the need to register their children, and children in foster care or in psychiatric hospitals.

Organizations such as Coram, funded by the Home Office to help people apply, warn their funding is currently due to end on March 31. Marianne Lagrue, policy manager at Coram, told the House of Lords that the charity stopped accepting referrals in January because of this uncertainty.

Matt Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis UK, a charity helping homeless people apply to the scheme, warned that if funding is not renewed, rough sleepers could fall through the cracks and face worse exploitation and living conditions.

Campaigners have urged the government to allow European nationals to apply to the scheme beyond the deadline, adding that the Home Office must learn from the Windrush scandal, in which British citizens who arrived in the country before 1973 were denied rights after being unable to provide documentation.

Once the deadline has passed, there will be no way of knowing how many people are in the country illegally and at risk of deportation.

Lewis has sent mixed messages on whether EEA and Swiss nationals who fail to register through the EU Settlement Scheme would be removed from the country. In October, Lewis said these people risked deportation, but in January he told the BBC that deporting them “is not what we’re about.”

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to correct the number of eligible European citizens that have not yet applied to the U.K.’s EU Settlement Scheme.

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