EU Nationals

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) that it is an absolute disgrace that, 18 months after the referendum, our highly valued EU nationals still do not know with any certainty what lies in store for them. Those well respected, hard-working, tax-paying members of our society have been treated appallingly by this Government who, despite numerous opportunities to do so, have ignored all opportunities to make a unilateral guarantee to our EU nationals that their current status will remain unaltered when the UK leaves the European Union. I repeat the appeal today: regardless of what others do, please will the Government do the right thing and guarantee to those EU citizens, who are living, working and contributing economically and socially to the wellbeing of this country, that their status will not change with Brexit and that they are welcome here?

Like other Members who have spoken, my mailbox has been full with letters from worried people, and my surgeries have a steady stream of people looking for some certainty. Let me give the Minister one example—that of Katarzyna Zalewska, a Polish EU citizen who has lived in my home town of Helensburgh for the past 12 years with her young son.

Katarzyna is a highly qualified, respected and experienced multilingual social worker, working in the area of domestic violence reduction among communities in which English is not the first language. She recently applied for UK citizenship, so keen is she to stay in Scotland after Brexit. On 9 October, she received a letter from the Home Office informing her that her application had been refused on the minor technicality that she had not provided her blue residence card. UK Visas and Immigration could not be satisfied that she was a permanent resident on the date of her application for naturalisation. It said to her:

“The fact that that you have been refused is not because you do not qualify for Permanent Residence, it is because you have not provided a Permanent Residence Blue Card.”

That is patently absurd. Her blue card may have expired, it may have been lost, but she has provided references from her employers and a host of other documentary evidence. The irony is that, very shortly afterwards, we all received the updated Home Office guidelines on settled status which said that EU citizens

“will not have their applications refused on minor technicalities.”

I ask the Minister to look again at Katarzyna’s case.

Looking at the wider picture, I have to ask why we are putting people through this emotional wringer. Why are we deliberately making it so difficult for people who simply want to get on with their lives?

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife that Scotland needs a bespoke immigration policy. If the Government here cannot provide what Scotland needs, then they must devolve immigration policy to the Scottish Government. We want a policy of thanking and appreciating those from abroad who have chosen to make their home in Scotland.