A Polish academic at Liverpool University feared she would have to leave the country after her application for settled status was rejected because she had taken her husband’s surname.
Dr Urszula McClurg came to the UK in 2008, when the government was asking Polish citizens to fill skills shortages in the country.
But after the Brexit referendum, her future in the country was thrown into doubt, which only became worse when the Home Office refused her application for settled status.
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Describing the process as “scary”, she said: “I knew I had the time [to sort it out] but I think it was more resentment and this sort of exasperation that we’ve all said this is how this is going to go, we’ve all said the system is badly designed and here I am knowing all these many people being rejected, being rejected myself.”
Dr McClurg’s problem was solved a week later by the Home Office, and she has been granted settled status, but the experience has left the 37-year-old cancer researcher feeling more unwelcome in the country she has called home for 13 years.
She said: “When I came here, Tony Blair was appearing on Polish news regularly, asking for people to come, saying what an amazing opportunity it would be for us and what a huge shortage of skills there was here.
“And then we’ve come, we’ve made our lives here, we’ve married people, bought houses and then [we] suddenly face that situation that now you’re this unwanted Shroedinger’s immigrant stealing jobs and benefits at the same time and all of that.
“It just really makes me question, would it have not been better to have settled somewhere else?”
She is not the only person this has happened to either. Kate Smart, CEO of Settled, which helps EU citizens looking to stay in the UK, said: “We have heard of a couple of cases where women who have changed their surname are finding that this is causing a problem with the Home Office app.
“It's good to hear that in this case the woman received support to resolve the problem, but it does show that less than one week after the EU Settlement Scheme deadline people are finding the digital only status difficult to work with. It's no substitute for an old fashioned passport or ID card.”
The lack of a physical document only adds to Dr McClurg’s feeling of insecurity, drawing uncomfortable comparisons with the Windrush scandal that was due in part to a lack of formal documentation.
She said: “I have nothing in writing, no formal document. I have an email from the Home Office saying I have settled status, but how well is that going to fare with anything?”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Mrs McClurg applied to the EU Settlement Scheme in November 2018 during the testing phase. She was granted settled status six days later, which secured her rights in law.
“More than 6 million applications were made to the EU Settlement Scheme by 30 June 2021, with more than 5.1 million grants of status. This is an unprecedented achievement which has secured the rights of so many EU citizens.”
Polish community choosing to leave
Before coming to Liverpool from Newcastle in 2018, Dr McClurg considered moving elsewhere but, with a British husband, decided to remain in the country.
Others in the Polish community, however, have decided to leave.
She said: “I know a lot of Polish immigrants who are also at the university and they are other academics, some of them hired immigration lawyers and they got there in the end.
“But I know a lot more, much more working-class Polish people who are filling the real shortages. They’re the Uber drivers, the cleaners, that kind of real workforce that I think in a pandemic we’ve really realised we are all desperately dependent on.
“Very many of them have left.
“Many of them couldn’t figure out the system, some of them were very scared of the system, there wasn’t enough information, they were very scared that if they make an application and get a no they will literally have an immigration officer knocking on their door tomorrow and their kid will be pulled out of school and they will be deported on the day so they basically decided not to apply and leave on their own terms at the end of that school year.”
We are already starting to see the impact of their decisions, with shortages of HGV drivers forcing the government to lift a cap on driving hours so supermarkets can keep their shelves full.
Even those that remained are unsure of their status or their safety, choosing to band closer together. Dr McClurg herself chose to live in an area with more immigrants as it felt safer.
She said: “In the city centre now I wouldn’t speak to my parents on the phone in Polish, that seems way too dangerous now.
“15 years ago that wouldn’t necessarily have occurred to me, [but now] I wouldn’t talk in Polish on public transport.
“That played a role in why I took my husband’s surname, because I felt like maybe I will be safer and I will have a better chance of getting better treatment in offices by having a British surname.
“Ironically what caused the settled status problems also originated from Brexit because otherwise I wouldn’t have taken his surname and he definitely had no need or desire for me to take it."
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