"We urge people who are eligible to apply as soon as possible, secure the rights they deserve in UK law and join the 4.9 million who have been granted status," a Home Office spokesperson said. The Home Office said the immigration system for EU nationals was hugely successful. The Home Office, the government department that administers immigration policy, did not directly respond to requests for comment about de Groot's case or the lack of physical documents proving the status of successful applicants. He tried to start a new application to bypass the glitch but each time he entered his passport number it linked to his first application and he remained trapped in the photo-upload loop. On his last call, he said an official told him they did not have access to individual cases, so that was impossible.
Others said there was no problem.Įach time he phoned, de Groot said he asked the person to make a record of his complaint. Some officials told him there was a technical issue that would be resolved quickly. De Groot estimates he has spent over 100 hours contacting government officials who he said were either unable to help or gave conflicting information. So began a labyrinthine nightmare of telephone calls, emails and bureaucratic disarray. The next page of his application, which was reviewed by Reuters, said: "you do not need to provide new photos", and there was no option to upload one.Ī few weeks later, his application was rejected - for not having a photo. The online application was straightforward until he was asked to provide a photo. He also spends a few months a year building boats at a shipyard near London and captains a tall ship around the west coast of Scotland in the summer.Ī fluent English speaker, de Groot says he followed the post-Brexit rules by applying for a frontier worker permit to allow him to work in Britain while not being resident. He sails long, narrow barges from the Netherlands to England to be used as floating homes. "I have tried everything I can think of to communicate the simple fact that their website is not functioning as it should."ĭe Groot, 54, has worked happily in Britain on and off for the past six years. "I am trapped in a bureaucratic maze that would even astonish Kafka, and there is no exit," de Groot said. The experience of de Groot and eight other applicants spoken to by Reuters shows how Brexit has put some EU citizens at the mercy of government websites and officials, and how Britain may be inadvertently discouraging people with skills it needs. Those who succeed are not given a physical document to prove they have the right to live or work in Britain, so they remain hostage to websites when they need to show evidence of their status at borders, or when they apply for mortgages or loans. While the government has so far processed more than 5 million applications from EU citizens to continue living in Britain, lawyers and campaigners estimate there are tens of thousands who, like de Groot, risk missing the deadline. Under new immigration rules coming into force, de Groot faces the prospect of losing the right to come to Britain to work unless he can successfully apply for a visa through a government website by the end of June.įollowing its departure from the European Union's orbit at the end of December, Britain is changing its immigration system, ending the priority for EU citizens over people from elsewhere. LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - When Dutch boat captain and engineer Ernst-Jan de Groot applied to continue working in Britain after Brexit, he became ensnared in a bureaucratic nightmare because of an online glitch and says he is now likely to lose his job.
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