THE Home Office has launched a new information campaign urging EU citizens living in the UK to apply for its settlement scheme as soon as possible.
The launch of the campaign came on the same day as immigration enforcement action in Glasgow led to a large protest and anger from the Scottish Government.
EU citizens have a deadline of June 30 to apply for settled status. This will afford them legal status to carry on living and working in the UK now the Brexit transition period and freedom of movement has ended. The latest figures show 5.4 million applications have been made to the scheme, with more than 4.9m grants of status. There were 4.88m applications from England, 268,500 from Scotland, 89,800 from Wales and 88,600 from Northern Ireland.
The campaign aims to make sure that EU citizens and their family members are aware of the deadline and know they need to apply, with adverts appearing on social media, TV and radio. So far, £8m has been spent on communication around the EU settlement scheme, the Government said.
Meanwhile, a warning has been issued that there has been a “worrying” increase in the number of complex cases piling up as the deadline looms.
The Citizens Rights Project says the number of people it is supporting with their applications has doubled since the beginning of the grace period of an extra six months to apply between January and June. It said all these clients have some kind of vulnerability and 70% of had complex cases that involve a lengthy process.
Project co-ordinator Noelia Martinez said: “The settlement has been designed with the circumstances of a fully integrated, working EU adult in mind. It presents real difficulties to many of the most vulnerable, such as children, elderly, homeless people, victims of domestic abuse, people with a language barrier or people digitally excluded.”
The project is resuming free, multilingual, face-to-face clinics around Scotland ahead of the deadline.
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