Woman, 22, faces being deported despite living in the UK all her life
Emma has spent her whole life thinking she was a British citizen.
Born in the UK to a Portuguese mother, she has only ever lived here and has a British birth certificate.
So it came as a huge surprise when the 22-year-old’s request for a British passport was rejected.
Following Brexit, EU citizens living in the UK were offered the chance to apply for settled status.
Last year, however, Emma realised she had missed the deadline to apply.
She understood she was not officially a British citizen when she applied to be a care worker and needed to show the right to work.
She is not allowed to appeal the Home Office’s decision and risks being removed to a country she has never lived in.
“When I got the rejection letter I was basically told how to leave the country,” she said, adding that she was “shocked”.
“There’s a high chance I could be deported to Portugal and I would be separated from my family,” Emma (not her real name) said.
“I would have to start a whole new life.”
Emma was told she had not provided ‘sufficient information or evidence’
Emma’s mother applied for settled status successfully and can remain in the UK permanently.
Emma has been told she can resubmit her application with additional evidence showing she meets reasonable grounds for applying late. She is doing this, but in the meantime can’t work, open a bank account, rent a flat or get secondary care on the NHS.
The deadline for most people to apply for settled status was 30 June 2021, but applications are still considered past that deadline.
In August 2023, however, the Home Office tightened the criteria over “reasonable grounds” for late applicants.
Between July 2022 and June 2023 an average of 1,730 applications a month were found to be invalid, but in August 2023 that figure jumped to 9,470 and in September – the latest month of official data – it rose again, to 13,930.
Emma’s situation is also being encountered by other European citizens in the UK.
Dumitru Calota, a bus driver and Romanian national who has been working in the UK since 2016, was told his application for settled status could be refused on grounds of “false documentation”.
Mr Calota has pre-settled status – permission to remain in the country for five years – which in his case expires in 2025. He has been trying to obtain settled status.
He submitted his HSBC bank statements as proof of residency but was told by the Home Office that his statements were “false documentation” and therefore they are considering refusing his application.
“I was treated like a criminal,” he said. “I didn’t expect an official document to be considered false by the Home Office.”
Dumitru Calota was told he had submitted false documentation
Luke Piper, head of immigration at the Work Rights Centre charity, is concerned that the rise in invalid applications will create a whole new cohort of vulnerable people who might be exploited because they don’t have settled status.
“We’re going to have a long-standing population of people who are undocumented in the UK and they will become more and more entrenched into their being undocumented, not able to work, not able to rent and being exposed to potential exploitation,” he said.
“I’ve come across cases where people who haven’t applied to the settlement scheme are being exploited by bad employers and people smugglers.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “More than two years have passed since the deadline for applying to the scheme, which was widely publicised. We continue to accept and consider late applications from those with reasonable grounds for their delay in applying.
“The EU Settlement Scheme has provided millions of EU citizens and their eligible family members with the immigration status they need to continue living and working in the UK now that we have left the EU.”
The last blast furnaces left operating in Britain could see their fate sealed within days, after their Chinese owners took the decision to cut off the crucial supply of ingredients keeping them running.
Jingye, the owner of British Steel in Scunthorpe, has, according to union representatives, cancelled future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running.
The upshot is that they may have to close next month – even sooner than the earliest date suggested for its closure.
Read more: Thousands of jobs at risk as British Steel consults unions over closure
The fate of the blast furnaces – the last two domestic sources of virgin steel, made from iron ore rather than recycled – is likely to be determined in a matter of days, with the Department for Business and Trade now actively pondering nationalisation.
The upshot is that even as Britain contends with a trade war across the Atlantic, it is now working against the clock to secure the future of steelmaking at Scunthorpe.
The talks between the government and Jingye broke down last week after the Chinese company, which bought British Steel out of receivership in 2020, rejected a £500m offer of public money to replace the existing furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
The sum is the same one it offered to Tata Steel, which has shut down the other remaining UK blast furnaces in Port Talbot and is planning to build electric furnaces – which have far lower carbon emissions.
These steel workers could soon be out of work
However, the owners argue that the amount is too little to justify extra investment at Scunthorpe, and said last week they were now consulting on the date of shutting both the blast furnaces and the attached steelworks.
Since British Steel is the main provider of steel rails to Network Rail – as well as other construction steels available from only a few sites in the world – the closure would leave the UK more reliant on imports for critical infrastructure sites.
However, since the site belongs to its Chinese owners, a decision to nationalise the site would involve radical steps government officials are wary of taking.
They also fear leaving taxpayers exposed to a potentially loss-making business for the long run.
The dilemma has been heightened by the sharp turn in geopolitical sentiment following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The incipient trade war and threatened cut in American support to Europe have sparked fresh calls for countries to act urgently to secure their own supplies of critical materials, especially those used for defence and infrastructure.
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Gareth Stace, head of UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said: “Talks seem to have broken down between government and British Steel.
“My advice to government is: please, Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, get back round that negotiating table, thrash out a deal, and if a deal can’t be found in the next few days, then I fear for the very future of the sector, but also here for Scunthorpe steelworks.”
British Steel declined to comment.
UK
Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace branded ‘crude attempt to enrich himself’ as Chinese spy documents set to be released
Prince Andrew’s efforts to make money from his Pitch@Palace project have been branded as a “crude attempt to enrich himself” at the expense of “unsuspecting tech founders”, as new documents may shed more light on what he and his team have been attempting to sell.
Today is the deadline for documents to be released relating to Prince Andrew‘s former senior adviser Dominic Hampshire and his interactions with the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
In February, an immigration tribunal heard how the intelligence services had contacted Mr Hampshire about Mr Yang back in 2022. Mr Yang helped set up Pitch@Palace China, a branch of the duke’s scheme to help young entrepreneurs.
The alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, has links with Prince Andrew
Yang Tengbo. Pic: Pitch@Palace
Judges banned Mr Yang from the UK, saying his association with a senior royal had made Prince Andrew “vulnerable” and posed a threat to national security. Mr Yang challenged that decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Since that hearing, media organisations have applied for certain documents relating to the case and Mr Hampshire’s support for Mr Yang to be made public. SIAC agreed to release some information of public interest. It is hoped they may include more details on deals that he was trying to do on behalf of Prince Andrew.
So what do we know about potential deals for Pitch@Palace so far?
In February, Sky News confirmed that palace officials had a meeting last summer with tech funding company StartupBootcamp to discuss a potential tie-up between them and Prince Andrew relating to his Pitch@Palace project.
The palace wasn’t involved in the fine details of a deal but wanted guarantees to make sure it wouldn’t impact the Royal Family in the future. Sky News understands from one source that the price being discussed for Pitch was around £750,000 – there are, however, reports that a deal may have stalled.
Photos we found on the Chinese Chamber of Commerce website show an event held in Asia between StartupBootcamp and Innovate Global, believed to be an offshoot of Pitch.
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Who is alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo?
Documents, released in relation to the investigations into Mr Tengbo, have also shown how much the duke has always seen Pitch as a way of potentially making money. One document from 21 August 2021 clearly states “the duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.
But Prince Andrew’s apparent intention to use Pitch to make money has led to concerns about whether he is unfairly using the contacts and information he gained when he was a working royal.
Norman Baker, former MP and author of books on royal finances, believes it is “a crude attempt to enrich himself” and goes against what the tech entrepreneurs thought they were signing up for.
Read more:
Who is Yang Tenbo?
Virginia Giuffre says she has days to live
Emails between Andrew and Epstein revealed
He told Sky News: “The data given by these business people was given on the basis it was an official operation and not something for Prince Andrew, and so in my view, Prince Andrew had no right legally or morally to take the data which has been collected, a huge amount of data, and sell it…
“And quite clearly if you’re going to sell it off to StartupBootcamp, that is not what people had in mind. The entrepreneurs who joined Pitch@Palace did not do so to enrich Prince Andrew,” he said.
Rich Wilson was one tech entrepreneur who was approached at the start of Pitch@Palace to sign up, but he stepped away when he spotted a clause in the contract saying they’d be entitled to 2% equity in any funding he secured.
He feels Prince Andrew is continuing to use those he made a show of supporting.
He said: “It makes me feel sick. I think it’s terrible – that he is continuing to exploit unsuspecting tech founders in this way. A lot of them, I’m quite grey and old in the tooth now, I saw it coming, but clearly most didn’t. And a lot of them were quite young.
“It’ll be their first venture and you’re learning on the trot, so to speak. So to take advantage of people in such a major way – that’s an awful, sickening thing to do.”
We approached StartupBootcamp who said they had no comment to make, and the Duke of York’s office did not respond.
With reports that a deal may have stalled, it could be a big setback for the duke – especially with questions still about how he’ll continue to pay for his home on the Windsor estate now that the King no longer gives him financial support.
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