NEWS
13/12/2016
The day EU citizens found their voice
Read our special report on going to No.10 and how the media responded to the publication of the British Future report. See the special report here.
12/12/2016
Our joint letter to Theresa May with the leading organisations of British Citizens living in Europe.
We extracted the 14 key recommendations from the British Future report on the status of EU citizens in the UK after Brexit. Read it here.
01/12/2016
The system is broken
47 years for the Home Office to register all EU citizens legally living in the UK.
Our reaction following the publication of the latest data from the Home Office:
Home Office EU citizens’ crisis – UK residency system is broken
EU citizens’ rights group the3million calls on the Home Secretary to guarantee residency for more than 3 million people
Date:
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Today the Home Office released new data on applications for the “permanent residence” card by EU citizens. While numbers have risen to an all-time high, the figures clearly show the current system will not be able to process the 3 million non-British EU citizens currently living and working in the UK and support their right to remain. Based on the latest data it would take 47 years to register the 3 million EU citizens currently living and working in the UK.
More alarming is the rejection rate: at 30% many EU citizens are not able to prove their right of residence despite residing here legally, which leaves them potentially at risk of deportation from the day the UK leaves the EU.
According to the3million, up to 1 million EU citizens in this country could be at risk of deportation from the day the UK leaves the EU.
Nicolas Hatton, chair of the the3million, said:
"This shocking data from the Home Office is the latest evidence that the system is broken. The fact is that up to a third of the 3 million EU citizens residing legally in this country will not be able to exercise their right to remain within the current system.
As the chair of the3million, I call on the Home Secretary Amber Rudd to remove the threat of deportation without notice and to guarantee today that all EU citizens living legally in the UK will be able to exercise their right to remain before the UK leaves the EU.
We are people with families, children, friends and work colleagues and we are rightly worried about a very uncertain future.”
Notes to editors:
the3million is a grass-root organisation of EU citizens from other member states living in the UK.
It offers a support network to EU citizens and lobbies the government to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK.
The data was published today on the Home Office website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/immigration-statistics-quarterly-release
All the figures on this release only relates to the applications made by the citizens of the 27 other EU countries.
Number of applications by EU citizens in Q3 2016: 16,009 (55% up from 10,269 in Q2 2016)
Number of rejections: 4,728 (up 60% from 2,962 in Q2 2016)
Rejections combine invalid applications and rejected applications