So there it is, tonight the government refused to give any protection to the 3M European citizens<\/a> that have lived here and contributed to this country. That includes me and after ten years in this country, what should I do?<\/p>\n Apply for citizenship (naturalisation) of course<\/strong><\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n I used to work as a secretary for an immigration lawyer as a young woman, so I got quite comfortable with paperwork. It\u2019s not scary, it\u2019s just about being diligent. So I thought I\u2019d share some of what I found applying for citizenship as a professional with an Italian passport. So I\u2019m not a lawyer, just trying to help.<\/p>\n First off: if you start your application right now, it will take you over a year and a half<\/strong>. So chop chop. Article 50 negotiations will take 2 years so no time to waste.<\/p>\n Assumptions:<\/p>\n (If you\u2019re a student, the spouse of a British, on a family or anything else, you\u2019ll have to consult the very badly laid out government site for it.<\/a> But it\u2019s a gov.uk site I hear you say! Yes and it looks pretty but it gives you no sense of what\u2019s important and how long it\u2019ll take.)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a list of what you need to prepare if you\u2019re planning on staying in the UK after Brexit as an EU citizen.<\/strong><\/p>\n Fill in this in for the last five years<\/strong>. You will be referring to this a lot.<\/p>\n 4. Buy the Life in the UK<\/a> book (\u00a312.99)<\/strong> and start studying it. You shouldn\u2019t need more than 20 hours of study.<\/p>\n 5. Book a Life in the Uk test<\/a> (\u00a350)<\/strong> in a local test centre. Stick to their ID requirements. Make sure you don\u2019t bring printed e-bills as proof of address, they won\u2019t take them. And yes I found out because I made that mistake.<\/p>\n 6. If you have not studied in an accredited English speaking institution<\/a>, you\u2019ll have to prove you can speak english and sit a spoken test (ESOL) at a test centre<\/a>. (\u00a3150)<\/strong><\/p>\n 7. You will have to collect P60s for the last 5 years and lots of information proving you have been working, employed at all times, running your own company, VAT returns, proof of payments, payslips, etc. It doesn\u2019t matter if you decide to hire a lawyer or not, they can\u2019t fish those documents out for you, so start digging.<\/p>\n Brace yourself now.<\/p>\n Official Step 1: <\/strong>Apply for a permanent residence document<\/a><\/p>\n Once you have this, you may need to wait 12 months. F<\/strong>rom page 9 of the guide<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c[you need to] have held permanent resident status for 12 months before applying for naturalisation. This means that you may need to wait until you have been in the United Kingdom for 6 years before you can apply. When you apply for a permanent residence document the evidence that you supply for your EEA(PR) application must be for a 5 year period that ended at least a year before you want to apply for citizenship.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For example: Official Step 2: <\/strong>Naturalisation<\/a><\/p>\n NB: Make sure you have not travelled for more than 90 days in the year prior to your application<\/strong> AND you were in the UK \u201con the day 5 years before the application is received by the Home Office\u201d. Random I know.<\/p>\n So in total this process will cost you \u00a31574.19 but at the next elections at least you get your say.<\/p>\n See you in 2020 dear Tories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A guide to surviving Brexit for Europeans So there it is, tonight the government refused to give any protection to the 3M European citizens that have lived here and contributed to this country. That includes me and after ten years in this country, what should I do? Apply for citizenship (naturalisation) of course! I used… Continue reading A guide to surviving Brexit for Europeans<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-of-things","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p41XhY-EH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.designswarm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\u00a0If you apply for Permanent Residence on 1 March 2017 and want to apply for citizenship once that application is decided, you should send evidence that shows you were exercising Treaty rights as a qualified person or family member from 1 March 2011 to 1 March 2016.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n