With less than three more months to go until the deadline for European Union citizens living in the United Kingdom to apply for the latter’s EU Settlement Scheme, the number of those who have already applied for the status is about five million.

While the number of those who have applied to settle in the UK and continue living there, despite the country has now become a non-EU member, is higher than the number of EU citizens registered living in the UK by the end of December 2019 (3.7 million), there are many EU citizens currently living in the UK who haven’t applied yet, StudyinPoland.info reports.

With many EU citizens having lived for years in the UK without needing a passport and the closure of passport processing offices all across Europe amid the pandemic, many remain unable to obtain the necessary documents to apply for their Settled status particularly vulnerable categories.

Now, many groups, including MPs, other officials, and campaigners of EU citizens’ rights in the UK are expressing their concerns on what will happen with those who fail to apply and the possibility for these people to be deported from the UK.

Only last month, Czechia’s Romani community member Renáta Plachetková, who was sent for a visit in the UK by the Czech Labor and Social Affairs Ministry, warned Czech citizens in the UK, including of Romani community, that if they are not granted settled status by June 30, 2021, chances are high they be deported.

“The representation of the Czech community on the territory of Great Britain is estimated at 120,000 people, of whom 70,000 represent the Romani community,” she said.

“Yes, they will be deported, effectively, if they are illegally present on the territory,” she reiterated, further explaining that if the system has no record of a person having applied for settled status, “the basis for the cancellation is that they haven’t passed the residency test.”

According to Plachetková, many Czech citizens will have it difficult to apply for the Scheme in the remaining months as they lack valid travel documents from their home country, the Czech Republic, adding that other nationals of Eastern European countries are also facing the same problem.

EP’s Brexit Coordinator in January 2020: UK Won’t Deport Unregistered EU Nationals

Back in January 2020, the European Parliament Brexit coordinator Guy Verhofstadt, after a meeting with the British ministers including Brexit Minister Stephen Barclay, at the time, had said that Britain would not automatically deport EU citizens who fail to apply for the right to remain in the country after Brexit.

Commenting on the issue, Verhofstadt, had among others, said that after June 2021, the UK would allow a grace period for those who fail to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme.

“What will happen for those people even after the grace period? Well, there will be no automatic deportation… After the grace period, they will have a possibility to apply, giving the grounds why it was not possible to do it within the normal procedures,” Verhofstadt had said at the time.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman had also confirmed Verhofstadt’s comments that there would be no automatic deportation.

The discussion on the possible deportation of EU citizens without settled status in the UK had been fuelled by Security Minister Brandon Lewis, who had threatened EU citizens living in the UK with deportation if they fail to apply for their settled status after Brexit, back in October 2019.

Campaigners Warn of a “Windrush-Plus” Scenario

Despite the assurance that coordinator Guy Verhofstadt received in the past that no EU citizens without settled status in the UK would be automatically deported, last month, a group of the Welsh Parliament (Senedd) members have expressed their concerns on the rights of EU citizens that fail to register by June 30.

The Senedd External Affairs Committee has sent a letter to the Welsh and UK ministers on the issue, calling on the Welsh Government to step up its campaign to reach EU citizens and make sure people submit their applications on time.

Other campaigners on the rights of EU citizens in the UK have warned of a possible “Windrush-plus” scenario in the future if the UK decides to deport unregistered EU citizens in the second half of the year.

The Windrush scandal is the deportation of many Commonwealth citizens’ children, who, despite living and working in the UK for decades, was deported due to lack of official paperwork.

Wiard Sterk, part of an organization that campaigns to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK, told BBC in February this year that in some cases, people have been unable to apply, as they couldn’t renew their passports to complete their applications, in particular, more vulnerable categories of people as the elderly.

“There’s a great risk of a Windrush-plus,” Sterk said, adding that currently there are many cases similar to Windrush cases, where people could be found to be undocumented “whilst they have actually lived all their life in this country or most of their lives.”

September 2020: MPs Worry Settlement Scheme Will Have Tens of COVID-19 Frontline Workers Deported

In September last year, a group of British MPs had written to PM Boris Johnson expressing their concerns tens of thousands of EU citizens resident in the UK – including some of the COVID-19 frontline workers could be facing deportation because they “had fallen through the cracks of the government’s post-Brexit settled status scheme.”

“Millions of European migrants who live in the UK and who are now working in hospitals and supermarkets derive their right to be here from EU freedom of movement rules which the government is seeking to abolish,” the letter noted.

The MPs that signed the letter also pointed out that due to the government’s shut down for months amid the Coronavirus crisis, the applications system had been severely disrupted, thus making it difficult for many to apply.

In January, StudyinPoland.info reported that by the end of December 2020, about 4.9 million persons had filed an application for the EU Settlement Scheme, which gives all EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens the chance to continue living in the UK territory after June 30, though the UK is officially outside of the EU since December 31, 2020, and no longer applies the freedom of movement.