'Now or never': EU citizens living in Britain urged to secure UK residency as Brexit deadline looms

Applicants have until Wednesday to arrange the paperwork required

EU citizens have until June 30 to apply for settled status in the UK after Brexit. AP

European embassies in London are urging their citizens to apply for settled status in the UK before Wednesday’s deadline to secure residency after Brexit.

“It’s now or never,” was the message from France’s embassy to its citizens.

It warned French people they risked making themselves illegal immigrants if they did not arrange the necessary paperwork in time.

Poland, Spain and Denmark’s embassies were among other diplomatic missions to send out reminders as the deadline neared.

EU citizens who moved to Britain before the end of 2020 can apply to the scheme to obtain either settled or pre-settled status, depending on how long they have lived in the UK.

Settled status gives people a permanent right to live in Britain. Pre-settled status grants five years of residency and can later be upgraded.

The UK government is resisting calls to extend the June 30 deadline despite concerns from campaigners.

Critics fear a repeat of the Windrush scandal, in which Caribbean migrants were threatened with deportation decades after arriving in Britain.

“Even with very low failure rates, the number of people whose lives could be ruined are very high,” a group of campaigners from the opposition Labour Party said in a letter.

“Many vulnerable people – those without adequate computer literacy, children in care, people suffering personal crises – will not yet have applied.”

The British government says that extending the deadline would not solve the issue of reaching people who have yet to apply, the number of which is unknown.

There have been 5.6 million applications since the scheme opened in March 2019 – far more than the government's pre-Brexit estimate that about three million EU citizens lived in Britain.

“I want to be clear – we will not be extending the deadline,” Immigration Minister Kevin Foster said last week.

“Put simply, extending the deadline is not a solution in itself to reaching those people who have not yet applied and we would just be in a position further down the line where we would be asked to extend again, creating even more uncertainty.”

The government says people who have applied by the end of June will be sent letters giving them 28 days to act.

People will be able to apply after the deadline if they had reasonable grounds such as an illness that prevented them doing so sooner, Mr Foster said.

Campaigners want the government to provide proof of status in physical as well as digital format.