Lack of trust in UK government’s settled status scheme pushes EU citizens to apply for naturalisation

Many EU nationals do not trust the UK government's settled status scheme and are being pushed to apply for British citizenship to secure the position of their families, new research by the University of Birmingham's Eurochildren project has found. Eurochildren, which is researching the lives of EU citizens in the UK, has released three new reports covering the legal, statistical and sociological aspects of the impact of Brexit on EU families. The three reports are based on a two-year study led by the University of Birmingham's Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) and affiliated to The UK in a Changing Europe. Key findings of each report show: Parallels and differences between ending Commonwealth and EU citizen free movement rights The status of EU citizens in the UK presents a similar policy dilemma for the British government today as it did when it ended Commonwealth immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. When the UK government continued the lawful residence of Commonwealth residents by primary legislation, there was no need for existing residents to apply for a new immigration status. Today, the British government has decided to force UK resident EU citizens who want to remain lawfully in the UK to apply for immigration status. Failure to apply for settled status will lead to a lawful EU resident becoming an unlawful resident as soon as the application deadline expires.