Draft of Federation letter to Keir Starmer on EU citizens

 

Dear Sir Keir,

 

As the umbrella body for the main Polish organizations in the UK since 1947 we strongly urge you to announce that a future UK government led by yourself would offer default UK citizenship to all Polish and other EU citizens living in the UK with settled status. We believe that you could also eventually extend this to those with pre-settled status as soon as their 5 year temporary status expires. You would be right to think that this would reassure them of their continued further integration into the UK economy and into the social and cultural fabric of this country. It would also fulfil the promise made by those campaigning to leave the EU in 2016 that the security of EU citizens living in this country would be assured.

While we have strongly supported the recent campaign by the3million and others to extend voting rights in parliamentary elections to those EU citizens with settled status, yet this proposal has not yet been adopted by either of the main political parties. Consequently, more than 4 million UK taxpayers with EU citizenship remain without parliamentary representation in this country. We feel that their chance to have automatic access to UK citizenship, despite the inevitable initial fee, would resolve in a more straightforward way the issue of their current disenfranchisement. Parliamentary voting rights for EU citizens as EU citizens, would require introducing a constitutional change, but this would not be true of a decision to extend UK citizenship to them. Currently, while they are valuable stakeholders in British society and the British economy, they are still living at the whim of possible Home Office reinterpretations of their status, similar to that faced by the Windrush generation. They live with the status of “immigrant” which makes them feel vulnerable each time the issue of immigration arises in public debate. 

At least 1.138 million Polish nationals in this country have applied successfully for either settled or pre-settled status and have long been making a valuable contribution to this country. It would be advantageous for a future UK government to cement that positive achievement with the unconditional offer of UK citizenship. We look forward to your confirmation that you would want to  proceed with this generous but sensible proposal.

Yours sincerely