It has not come out motu proprio, but is the result of pressure from a sector of the press. But the British Government has shown a friendly face to citizens of EU countries who lived in the country before Brexit, and will consider appeals to stay there permanently (and be able to work) from those who, through ignorance, do not they submitted the application within the established deadlines.
The decision of the Ministry of the Interior responds to the publicity of cases such as that of a 34-year-old Malagasy woman who, on December 26, after spending the Christmas holidays in Spain, was arrested at Luton airport and placed in a return plane because he did not have settled status, the equivalent of a lifetime residence permit that, as part of the Brexit agreements, London granted to citizens of EU countries who had been there for at least five years were when the breakup occurred and they did the relevant procedures before June 2021.
Almost six million Europeans (among them 376,370 Spaniards) obtained settled status through an easy online procedure, but, as bureaucracy is bureaucracy, there were more complex cases, such as those that had not been in place for five years in a row who were in Great Britain, but parties in two or more periods (like Malaga, which passed the pandemic in South Africa), or those who, given that they already had permanent residence, thought they had the papers in order without the need to adapt them to the Brexit agreements with the European Union.
Until August, Interior had a rather wide-ranging hand, but in the summer it took a stricter stance and did not give anyone the benefit of the doubt, which resulted in aberrations such as the cancellation of bank accounts by Santander from an Italian restaurant entrepreneur who had been living and paying tax in the UK for twenty-one years, but had not applied for settled status because he didn't think he needed it. It is, on another scale, like Jamaicans and natives of Caribbean countries who immigrated in the 1960s and 1970s without the need for papers, as Commonwealth citizens, and over time have been deported for lack of British passports and be technically "illegal".
After a campaign led by the pro-European newspaper The Guardian, disclosing the cases of the Italian and the Spanish, the Government has backed down and announced that it will consider the appeals of those who, having residence permits prior to Brexit, they did not apply for settled status within the deadline. It is not an automatic concession, but everyone will have to explain the circumstances of their situation.
EU tourists can enter the UK, in the vast majority of cases, simply with the ePassport, without the need to speak to any customs officers. But sometimes the system doesn't work, and if the person concerned says they live or come to work in the UK without having settled status, problems can arise. Last year the border police prevented the entry of around five thousand Europeans, mostly Romanians, Bulgarians and Poles. Britons with second residences in the EU complain that they cannot stay for more than six months without a visa.
