imutual.co.uk

Michael Goulden wrote:This is my mum, she’s 83 and has got dementia. She met my dad in 1962 when she worked for the British Army as a translator. My dad was in the Royal Artillery. They moved back to England in late 1962 and got married. My sister was born in 1963 and I was born in 1966. She worked from the moment she arrived.

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Michael Goulden wrote:Today, I had to fill out an application to apply for her to have settled status. I was reluctant but realised that we could risk her becoming an “illegal immigrant”. She has no understanding of this process because of her dementia.

As part of the application I submitted her passport but that wasn’t enough. Oh no, I had to scan her face from side to side like an inmate in a concentration camp and then take the picture shown above. She became increasingly upset, “just tell the government I’ve been here for years and that I’m German”

I was crying on the inside. The rest of the application form was quite tricky with multiple verification codes and I doubt my mum, without dementia, would ever have completed it. It was undignified, intrusive and cruel. For those of you who voted for Brexit, is this what you wanted?

Full story:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1410 ... 58114.html
https://twitter.com/mikegoulden/status/ ... 58114?s=20

I hate everything that has been started by Brexit. It has brought no good whatsoever.

In February, when first attempting to apply for "Setled Status", SWMBO noticed that her married name was incorrectly spelled on her ID card. (It had been like that for 8 years with multiple journeys within the EU without any comment!) So she paid extra for "accelerated handling" for a corrected ID. She finally received it last week (blame Covid ), but had to pick it up personally from Lisbon, so now, of course, we're stuck in Portugal due to the ever-changing travel rules.

Then the wonderful Home Office "identification" App wouldn't even download on her phone, nor work on mine (no NFC), nor on our friend's Android phone. We then had our Dutch friend try on his top range Iphone -success. We got pictures of her ID card, we registered a mobile number, we verified the email address...... but then we needed to read the chip on her ID card and it just won't find it, let alone read it!

Today we had our appointment at the local Conservatory to "prove" there was nothing wrong with her card....... and, of course, they just said it was a problem with the App, having read off her address details using a special reader. Now we're out of time to progress her application.... along with thousand of others.

Now, SWMBO had "Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR)", granted in 1989, with a photocopied letter from the Home Office (unbelievably low tech) and a stamp in a long-expired Passport. Will this suffice? Who knows these days.... The reason for going for settled status was because ILR is old-tech and settled status is easier to prove, once granted.

Rather like the story quoted, SWMBO is bemused by all this garbage. She was brought up under a dictatorship that was still pulling out fingernails and learned very early that you keep a low profile and deal with "authority" as little as possible. After over 30 years in the UK, she finds the need to prove her "right to remain" a little odd (to say the least) and jumping through hoops to prove her identity even more so. I just fear the crap we'll face when we get back and try to sort this out...

However, the best thing is - if you can't prove your ID via the App, the Home Office say you must send them the ID by post! And that, my friends, will never happen! Without her ID, SWMBO cannot travel to see her family - and would be illegal even if she could..... and do you think she's going to trust the Home Office with that - the same Home Office that gave her "Indefinite Leave to remain" after we married, but now wants her to jump through hoops to prove her status!

Ah, but we've Taken Back Control.

And there's £350m a week more for the NHS.

pabenny wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 01 2021 6:29am

Ah, but we've Taken Back Control.

And there's £350m a week more for the NHS.

And we're finally getting a say on how many sausages can cross the Irish Sea. It wasn't mentioned much back in 2016, but I think we were all unaware then that there was virtually no limits on how much fresh meat we could move around within the UK.