A Dutch woman who has lived in the
UK for 24 years, and has two children with her British husband, has been told
by the Home Office that she should make arrangements to leave the country after
she applied for citizenship after the EU referendum.
The story of Monique Hawkins
highlights the practical difficulties faced by millions of EU citizens
concerned that they will not have the right to stay in Britain post-Brexit.
Hawkins had considered applying for
citizenship before but decided not to as it did not confer any rights beyond
her current EU rights. However, after the referendum she changed her mind,
fearful that those rights would be diminished after Britain leaves the EU.
European citizens marrying Britons
do not automatically qualify for UK citizenship under current rules and Hawkins
was concerned that if she did not apply she would be forced “to join a US-style
two-hour immigration queue” while the rest of her family “sail through the UK
passport lane”.
In order to get citizenship, she
first had to get a “permanent residency” document, which involves an 85-page
application form.
Hawkins said the Home Office had
overlooked vital information in her submission – she was unable to supply an
original of her Dutch passport because her father had recently died and she
needed her passport to continue to travel to the Netherlands to support her
mother.
However, the department not only
rejected her application but sent her a letter which took no account of her
right to be in the country irrespective of their decision. “As you appear to
have no alternative basis of stay in the United Kingdom you should now make
arrangements to leave,” the letter said.
When she phoned the Home Office to
discuss the decision communicated to her in October, four months after her
application, she was told her case could not be discussed on the phone or by
email. Hawkins said her treatment by the Home Office was as absurd as a “Monty
Python” sketch.
In a written complaint, Hawkins said
the worst aspect about the process was the inability to contact anyone. She
wrote: “I do not believe there is any other business, organisation or even
legal process in the world that would treat its customers/clients/applicants in
this manner.”
The software engineer, from Surrey,
said she never once thought she would be deported but said her experience
highlights the absurdity of the Home Office permanent residency process.
She was told that under the rules
she could not talk to anyone about her case and after making her written
complaint she received a letter saying her complaint did not qualify as a
complaint under Home Office guidelines.
She also
protested that while the Home Office would not discuss her case with her
personally, it was willing to respond to her MP Dominic Raab, who intervened on
her behalf.
She has now
written to appeal, but says in her complaint: “I am now left totally in limbo.
I do not know how long to wait for a reply. I do not know whether my
application will be reopened or not.”
According to the
Guardian, She was told the reason for the rejection was because she had not
included her original passport.
In her
complaint, Hawkins points out that she included a solicitor-approved photocopy
of her passport – which is permissible under the rules – plus a covering letter
to explain why she could not be without her passport for the four to six months
it takes to process.
Her
husband, Robert, raised another issue: that Europeans married to Britons do not
have an automatic right to citizenship. “As a British citizen, I had the
expectation that marrying someone from abroad would automatically give them the
right to become a British citizen. That seems to be the case unless your wife
happens to come from the European Union,” he said.
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