UKC

In case people weren't aware, if you're an EU citizen living in the UK under the 'EU settlement scheme' then you will need to take your proof of status documentation with you on holiday if you want to come back into the UK, not (as it says on my wife's) leave it at home in a safe place (like it tells you to).  Customs were actively asking non-UK passport holders for it when arriving in Guernsey (part of the UK common travel area) from France recently.  They were still letting people in without it, but telling them they'd be 'treated as a tourist'*, and that if they'd flown into Gatwick UK customs were likely to have put them back on the plane.

*I don't know what that means, I assume if they haven't left again before the maximum stay allowed without a visa, customs will come looking for them.

Yay Brexit!*

*for the sake of the internet this is sarcasm for not yay Brexit.

Great.  You can just smell all that red tape going up in flames.

Yep. Also the settled status thing is linked to your passport/ID document, so if you renew either you have to somehow get the Home Office to change it, otherwise at customs it 'may' not be accepted

An EU citizen with settled status tied to old passport (expiring soon) has gone online to tie settled status to their current nation ID card with longer validity (still valid to travel to UK if you have settled status).

There's supposed to be a confirmatory email but that hasn't arrived. Settled status was still tied to old (soon to be invalid) passport when going through border control.  

It looks like when passports expire the transfer of settled status to a different document doesn't actually work in reality. Maybe it renders an EU citizen who made their life here in the UK into an illegal immigrant for an indeterminate time.    

My son (Finnish passport) applied for his provisional drivers license earlier this year on turning 17. You have to have a code from your settle status (can't remember how you get that but it was straightforward) to apply. You send the code off with your application and 40 quid IIRC to the DVLA. The code is time limited to 30 days before it expires. The DVLA is currently taking a minimum of 90 days to process license applications. They can not accept them with expired settled status codes on them, but they have no way of dealing with applications from applicants who are not British but have settled status within the 30 day time limit on the settled status code. So there seems to be literally no way for a non-citizen British residents to apply for a driving license currently.

It may not shock people to hear that they have so far not seemed to be very good about refunding the application fee. It was something Kafkaesque like you need an applicant case number - which they won't give - before they can refund you for your failed application.

Which, as Mrs J discovered, can be well before the expiry date on the passport. 

Tory nativism in action...

There are lots of reasons why a strong anti-racism movement is important and now we're seeing some of the many ways in which  racism affects us all - not only people of colour and minorities.

My French 'residents permit' (carte de séjour) is a separate document which for most purposes I can use instead of my passport (it has a photo & my address) & its not linked to my passport so I can renew one without having to update the other. Why does the UK have such a stupid system ? it was clear that it was going to lead to problems (eg see Toby's post about his son)

Similar concerns here as Mrs Kalna is an EU citizen but only for around to changing her driving license to a UK one 5 weeks ago. She kept postponing it as you have to send off your passport for an exchange, but it needed to be done.

Through the website or app, as you say it is easy enough to sort.

Shockingly the DVLA don't take online card payments and neither of us have cheque books so we resorted to getting a postal order (I didn't even know what they were...)

If it's some comfort Mrs Kalna's passport was returned in 3 weeks and her license arrived the following day so fingers crossed it's not too bad for your son if he reapplies.

Not stupid. Indifferent or even deliberate.

^This.  It's intended to be shit, all part of the "hostile environment".

"A" system singular....  Haven't you realised until now - ALL systems in the UK are bl00dy stupid.

He (his mum mainly actually!) has hung around for literally hours on the helpline to talk to someone but it hasn't actually helped - no one seemed to have a way to get round the problem.

Since he first applied for the license we actually went through the reasonable amount of hassle and some expense of getting his British citizenship recognised. The law had to be changed because when he was born, also the case with his slightly younger brother, because his mother and I aren't actually married, he didn't automatically qualify for a British passport. They changed the law in the late Noughties so this doesn't happen now as I understand it, but my older kids are of the generation where marital status still stopped some children of British fathers not getting citizenship. So he now has a British passport so can apply again without need the code, but perhaps understandably he wants his application fee back from the first failed application!

Thanks.

I realise that this is all exasperating but I think it would be easier and less stressful to assume that every few years the world of international travel gets a bit more difficult and its never going to return to the relaxed days of old. 

First terrorism put paid to simple movement, then Brexit, then Covid.......

I've been to about 8 places in the last 20 months and just get used to a whole palaver of new requirements. Yes, it's annoying but no point in raging against it or looking for blame (not the OP)

But if you really want difficulty, try Russia.

I thought it was bad enough in 2018 but my son went last weekend and said they now have his DNA along with all the other demands! 

My Polish friend not long came back from, er, Poland, and was not asked for it.  All he carries is his Polish ID card (which remains allowed if you have settled status).  The UK immigration system will tell them that he has settled status when they scan it.

I suspect Guernsey probably doesn't know the game properly.

It’s not a game!

I think you know exactly what I meant

OK, if you want it more formally written: "I suspect Guernsey's border guards are not properly trained in the requirement for those who have settled status when entering the UK".

(I have no idea what Guernsey's requirement is, as even though they are in the CTA they may well not have the facility to check settled status electronically when scanning an ID or passport, unlike the UK border guards - so while paper proof is not needed to enter the UK, it may well be needed to enter Guernsey from outside the CTA as was happening here - the CTA is not like Schengen and each country can have its own entry requirements from outside, it is about travel *within* the UK and associated countries)

There are people who will have, in all good conscience, had a think and for whatever reason voted for Brexit. I would disagree with them, but they may well have been reasonable. Then there are a great many who voted for Brexit who are quite simply arseholes and for that comment I make no apology whatsoever. 

The EU is by no means perfect, so I do get some of the Brexit arguments, however I did vote Remain because the s**tshow would have been best avoided.

If Rom was still here (??) he’d be around soon to tell you it was most certainly deliberate, one of the few subjects on which his arguments were rational and persuasive.

My wife is French with settled status and noted that the original acceptance email said that she should not print out the acceptance email.  It would seem her employer could access proof that she had settled status, so that left a trip back from France as the concern.

When we came back through, Calais earlier this month the Border Force official asked if she lived in the UK and if she had settled status and then confirmed that the computer would show that she had it when her French passport was scanned.  It duely did and surprisingly, the system worked.  The next challenge will be when she renews her passport next year.

Our plumber, who has a German wife, hadn't kept their childrens' UK passports up to date, so they travelled on their German ones.  They hadn't applied for settled status for their children, being born in the UK and to all intents and purposes being British.  However, as they were showing German passports, the Border Force found no .trace of their settled status.  The parents were legal, the children were not.  However, common sense prevailed and they were allowed back home again, but with a warning and a lesson learnt.  Worth sharing to avoid very regretable circumstances.

Of course none of this mattered pre-Brexit.  Progress?

For whatever is worth, I envisaged all this cluster fack and applied for the Residents Permit (Home Office-issued blue little document like the old driving licenses) as well as the easier settled status. When flying back the Border Force asked to proof I lived here, I said I own property, married a British National and have settled status, but that didn’t help them as they didn’t exactly know how or what to look for. When I asked whether it was the residents permit he might after, he said ‘maybe’, I just wanted to toy with them. I produced the document, he obviously didn’t know what he was looking at as he didn’t scan it or typed in the number, handed back and was let through. 

“Let’s take back control” seemed the least appropriate description for the process…

I wonder if carrying their exported UK passports night have been helpful. Obviously traveling in the German ones, but having the UK ones as backup to show that they have the right to re-enter the UK.

Hi, That is interesting/ i.e. worrying as I was told there is no documentation. It is all online? I have no written documentation, it is all on a website apparently?

Cheers for any info

Heike

I never got any  documents for my settled status - I have lived here since 1996 - they said just look on the website. I had to provide this for my employer ( University for whom I had worked since 2007). So I got a bar code, but never any documentation in paper.

Sounds like another Brexit nightmare.....

Interesting that your plumbers kids have German and UK passports. I'm British and my wife is German. We have a daughter born in the UK. I thought you couldn't have dual nationality with German and another anymore?

To the thread in general:

I'll be watching this with interest as we recently got married and my wife took my surname. She's trying to renew her German passport in her new surname (which is proving to be a bit of a nightmare). We hadn't even considered that there might be an issue with her settled status.

Same here.

Hi Mike,

You can have dual nationality. It is a bit of a faff to say the least, but it works. First your wife has to do a name declaration. For this you need loads of documents (all available on the the German embassy site). Then, once you have this you need to fill in loads of documents for your daughter (including marriage and birth certificates etc) and then you can get the passport, I got one for my son once Brexit reared its ugly head. You can have both German and British nationality for your daughter if your wife is German. 

Thanks a lot Heike, I'll definitely have a look into that. I was a bit gutted when it seemed that she could only have one or the other (especially considering brexit).

Whilst I agree that such a being is theoretically possibly has anyone ever actually met one?

Yes I am rather bitter about the whole thing, my wife is French and was originally told that their was no paperwork for settled status, apparently you just need to trust the online systems!

I am with you...

I don't think there are too many countries now that don't allow dual nationality - it often used to be that conscription was a complicating factor, but as full conscription is now a real rarity, particularly in Europe, that might account for the more relaxed views.

I don't think there is any conscription left at all in Germany, is there? And as you say you have daughter, it probably was never an issue anyway. Not so for girls who are dual national Israelis though! My sons are starting to speculate on whether they might need to have a year out before or after uni, in order to spend a chunk of it learning how to put mines on Russian tanks or similar, somewhere in a cold forest in central Finland!

Yes, I was strongly pro remain, but I have a number of good friends, who I would consider to be very thoughtful and certainly not racist, who voted leave. We have managed to avoid falling out.

Attached is what it looks like. Cost me £60 for the application but used immigration lawyers to do it for me. 

according to Priti's nice website they aren't available any more. The shits have struck again

https://www.gov.uk/permanent-residence-document-eu-eea

... and my son is at an age when he has to plan his visits to his grandmother carefully in order to avoid being in one of those tanks.

Thanks for posting this. We did not have a good experience with the Border Force recently, despite having the necessary paperwork.

I have researched this further. This the response from the Parliamentary Research Service:

" I can advise that the 'Entering the UK' guide on  https://www.gov.uk/ provides an overview of what Covid-19 and immigration documents travellers must present at the UK border, including information specific to people with settled or pre-settled status: https://www.gov.uk/uk-border-control "

From this I understand that the Settled Status should be proved on your phone via the link above. However we noticed that the website has been down on occasions. You can print out the form, and it is valid for thirty days.

A postal order is (or was) something your aunt or uncle used to send you for your birthday in the days before children ( or indeed many adults) had bank accounts.  It was probably for something like 10 shillings (do you know what those were?). 

Glad to see the DVLA has not succumbed to all this modern newfangled nonsense like online payments 

Thought i might report here, i did my change of details nline with a new passport a couple of days before this thread (after it was flagged at the border) and i just rceived a confirmation email that it's done.

Not particularly fast but it did eventually go through

I have always taxed my car via online card payments - no issues,

Chris

Thanks for the concrete info.

Still waiting here so sounds like we need to chase them up. If that is possible.

So have I, but it would appear that the license department and the "road tax" department work entirely separately to one another.

Renewed my photo ID driving licence including online payment in July this year.

It was a far simpler (and cheaper) than trying to decipher the paper form that I picked up from the post office.

I renewed my photo ID driving licence without any hassle too and they linked my 9 year old passport photo to it which saved a selfie. 
My ears and eyes are pretty much the same but the rest of my face is descending a little…..

Totally agree. I don't get why there seems to be so much interest in "nudges", as if it's some great social science revelation that if you make life easy for people, they do what you want them to do, when governments since the dawn of time have be exercising the mirror opposite of nudges - red tape - to stop people doing what they (governments) don't want them to do.

I’m taking my pooch to Europe for the first time on Monday. After the normal bloody expensive shots I was told you need to fill out a bunch of forms to take with you at £150 for the privilege, EVERY time they go… Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving…

You can console yourself that the money will all be going to the NHS, apparently. 

I’m just relieved that now we can have beer mats and curved bananas again. That outweighs any extra inconvenience in the rest of life.*

*for the benefit of the internet that was sarcasm for screw brexit.