Imagine this if you can. You are 21, working, and law-abiding. Your grandparents are English, your parents are English, you were born in England and have never lived anywhere else. You have a driving licence, a bank account, and an NI number. Then you receive a letter telling you to leave the UK or be deported.
Why? Because your English grandparents went on holiday to Australia and your mother (who has an English passport) happened to be born while they were there.
Or maybe you came to the UK 24 years ago, studied maths at Cambridge University and married an Englishman. You are a software developer and have two teenage children. You decide to apply for British citizenship post-Referendum - and are refused due to an error at the Home Office, and told you must leave. You are also told you may not discuss your case with anyone else and that you can only communicate with the Home Office by letter. When you make a formal complaint you are told that your complaint does not actually qualify as a complaint.
Both cases are in the news - how many more are not?
The Vote Leave manifesto promised it would treat EU citizens ‘no less favourably than at present’, but Mrs May has ignored this in her plan for "settled status" - a form of second-class citizenship, where the person cannot even work abroad ("Settled status would generally be lost if a person was absent from the UK for more than two years" - from May's proposal) and will have to have an identity card.
All EU citizens now in the UK will have to apply for settled status - even if they already have been granted permanent residency.
As one London businesswoman says, “I work, pay taxes, create jobs, integrate well, respect the culture and laws. If I am not welcome anymore, it's Britain's loss.”
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