Digital evidence of residence in the UK subject to discrimination

“Immigration after Brexit: Where do we go?” The law professor cited a York University study of more than 1,000 landlords at a conference organized by the UK at the Center for the Study of Changing Europe in London on the topic. .

The survey found that “digital receipt is the most influential factor for a landlord to reject a potential tenant, even after taking into account other factors such as age, occupation, race and gender”.

The digital format is one of the most criticized elements of the EU citizen registration system [EU Settlement Scheme, EUSS]Created to protect the residential rights of Europeans when the UK leaves the EU.

Instead of a physical card, the proof of immigration status is completely digital and is done through a British government portal.

The citizen has access to his own profile, which has the option of sharing his status with someone like a landlord, employer or other entity, created in the form of a code.

This code, together with the date of birth, is used to confirm entitlement to residence, work, health or education services, housing and social support.

The British government has argued from the outset that a digital proof of residency avoids problems such as loss, fraud or deterioration over time.

But activists have repeatedly warned of the problems the lack of physical documentation and the difficulty the system represents for disenfranchised, elderly or vulnerable people.

Catherine Barnard, a law professor at the University of Cambridge, who has been researching the topic, has found that immigrants also have limited knowledge of English, computers and computers or smart phones (`smartphones’).

“Having a paper document is very reassuring for them,” he said at the same conference.

For Kubla Jublanovski, an academic at the University of Exeter, the problem is not limited to the digital receipt, but to the digital system used to register European immigrants, where he found several technical flaws.

For example, he mentioned cases like the existence of different applications, lack of access to the ultimate source, or the intersection of different people’s profiles.

“These mistakes may seem technical or obscure, but they show something important in the configuration of the digital home system,” he emphasized.

“If something goes wrong, the status will not work. The visualization service may work, but if there is a deeper problem, the status will not be available”, he warned.

The Ministry of the Interior has calculated 462,490 applications by Portuguese citizens to the EUSS by the end of 2022, a mandatory residence permit in the post-Brexit regime.

Of these, 256,570 Portuguese received permanent residence permits [`settled status`]165,820 is a provisional title [`pre-settled status`] And 40,290 had their processes rejected or invalidated.

The number of applications is not equal to the number of Portuguese residents in the United Kingdom, as some are repeated due to the need to appeal or change from temporary to permanent status.