Sat urday 31 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
13‘ It was supposed to be easy’
Chefs tell of struggles with Home Offi ceWhen the chef Richard Bertinet ,
who has lived in the UK since 1998,
and runs a well-known cookery
school in Bath, was wrongly given
pre-settled status, meaning he
could only stay in the UK for up
to fi ve years, he felt betrayed. He
had sent off his passport confi dent
of securing the permanent right
to live in the country – but it was
not granted. After online outrage
about his case, he was contacted
by the Home Offi ce. In a statement,
offi cials indicated that he had made
a mistake in the application form,
and applied for the wrong status.
“I’m 99% sure I didn’t. I’m
worried that there are lots of people
in this situation,” said Bertinet, who
is married to a British woman and
has three children. He added that
he had repeatedly faced 20-minute
waits to get through on the Home
Offi ce helpline.
Another chef, Damian
Wawrzyniak , who has twice cooked
for the royal family and was seniorchef at the London 2012 Olympics
and Paralympics, was also given
pre-settled status , despite having
lived in the UK since 2005. Earlier
this month he sat in a room with
four friends, all of whom had arrived
in 2004 or 2005, to apply one after
another using an android phone (the
application app is not yet available
on i Phones).
Three of them were granted pre -
settled status and two got settled
status. In a statement, the Home
Offi ce said: “Mr Wawrzyniak was not
denied settled status. He confi rmed
that he was eligible for pre-settled
status when applying, and this is
what he was granted.”
He is annoyed at the implication
that it was his fault. “May be there
was a wrong button or something.
I can’t remember seeing the words
‘pre-settled status’ on the form, but
maybe there was something in the
small print,” he said. “I was sad: it
is supposed to be easy. Maybe the
Home Offi ce are not ready for such a
big operation.” The home secretary,
Priti Patel, tweeted that he was
being helped by her department to
get settled status, but misspelled his
name in her tweet.
A Polish woman who has been in
the UK since 2002 said she had made
an error on the online form. “I made
a mistake. A question popped up: it
asked if I agreed with the statement
that I have been in this country for
less than fi ve years. I misunderstood
and clicked the box ‘yes’. When I
realised I had made a mistake, there
was no way back and I couldn’t fi x
it,” she said. The mistake was partly
the result of her imperfect English.
As a result, a benefi ts claim has
been refused because she failed a
habitual residency test.
Amelia GentlemanDaniel Hannan warned that he was
seeing EU nationals being denied set-
tled status, despite years of residence
in the UK, and called on the home sec-
retary to address this “before we end
up with another Windrush scandal”.
The Home Offi ce says it has not
rejected anyone who has applied for
the scheme, and to date has granted
either settled status or pre-settled sta-
tus to over a million applicants.
“This is semantics. Granting some-
one pre-settled status when they
should have been given settled sta-
tus should be seen as a refusal,” said
Chris Desira, an immigration lawyer
and expert on the government’s EU
settled status scheme.
He said the Home Office was
attempting to present the granting
of pre-settled status as a success, but
he warned that this was a less secure
immigration status and urged those
who felt they had been wrongly
awarded this status to challenge the
decision. “You should be worried,” he
added. “Your leave in the UK is more
precarious.”
Nicolas Hatton, co-founder of the
EU citizens’ campaign group the3mil-
lion, said he believed the Home Offi ce
was anxious to avoid media stories of
EU citizens being declined status. “The
Home Offi ce is parking over a third of
applicants in this temporary status,
with no guarantee these people will be
able to get settled status in the future.
So it is a massive timebomb.”
All of the estimated 3.6 million EU
citizens resident in the UK must apply
for settled status so that they can con-
tinue living in the country legally once
free movement ends with Brexit. Any-
one who can demonstrate they have
been in the country for fi ve years is eli-
gible for settled status.
Anyone who has been in the coun-
try for a shorter amount of time, or
who has not proved defi nitively that
they have been here for the full fi veyears, will be granted pre-settled sta-
tus, and will have to apply again for
the permanent status once they have
accrued fi ve years’ of residence. In
the meantime, they must maintain
continuous residence, so will have
less freedom to leave the country for
extended periods.
Most of the 42% granted pre-settled
status will have been correctly given
that status because they have not yet
been here long enough but immigra-
tion experts are worried by stories of
applicants being wrongly categorised.
“We regularly see cases where an
individual’s residence exceeds fi ve
years but, often for no clear reason,
they are not granted settled status ,”
Tahmid Chowdhury of Here for Good,
a charity set up to provide free immi-
gration services to EU citizens , said.
Jill Rutter, director of strategy at
immigration and integration think-
tank British Future, said she was
concerned by the rise in the number
of people getting pre-settled status,
and said the proportion was higher
than she would have expected.
Conversations with community
groups supporting applicants indi-
cated that they were seeing “people
who expected to get settled status who
were surprised when they got pre-set-
tled status,” she said.
Home Offi ce statistics do not show
how many people who intended toapply for settled status were granted
pre-settled status instead but a spokes-
person said staff working on the
scheme were looking to grant the sta-
tus people were eligible for and not
refuse it.
The Home Offi ce said: “By the end
of June not a single person had been
refused the status for which they
applied. Nobody has been granted
pre-settled status without fi rst being
off ered, and declining, the oppor-
tunity to submit evidence that they
qualify for settled status.
“More than a million people have
been granted status through the EU
Settlement Scheme so far and two
thirds of those have been granted set-
tled status, which is in line with our
expectations.”
People granted pre-settled status
have the same rights to work, study,
receive healthcare and benefi ts as
those with settled status, the offi cial
said. However, in order to successfully
upgrade the status they will have to
remember to reapply by the deadline,
ensure they don’t leave the UK for long
stretches and do not breach the crimi-
nality requirements.
Although people have at least until
31 December 2020 to apply, the num-
ber of applicants surged after the home
secretary Priti Patel said free move-
ment would end on 31 October in the
event of no deal Brexit .”▲ A Portuguese woman interrupted a Sky News broadcast to claim the settled
status scheme was not working and had left her with ‘no voice’ PHOTOGRAPH: SKY▲ Chef Damian Wawrzyniak cooked
for the royal family on two occasions▼ The baker Richard Bertinet runs
a well-established cookery school in
Bath and has a British wife
PHOTOGRAPH:ALEX ATACK/THE GUARDIAN‘You should be
worried [if you get
pre-settled status].
Your leave in the UK
is more precarious’Chris Desira
Immigration lawyerRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws