Thousands of kids 'could become undocumented' after Brexit: Children’s charity
A children’s charity warns that Brexit could render as many as 900,000 UK-based children of EU origin “undocumented.”
Coram Children’s Legal Center issued the warning, saying the young ones could fail to pass a new Home Office registration scheme for EU nationals, which will take effect after the country has broken away from the 28-nation bloc, The Guardian reported on Monday.
The organization said children in foster care, in care homes, and others from vulnerable families are especially at risk.
“The Home Office estimates that between 10% and 20% of all applicants will be vulnerable, unable to provide documentary evidence of their time in the UK,” the paper wrote.
“If just 15% of the current population of EU national children fail to ‘regularize’ their status before the cut-off point, 100,000 children would be added to the UK’s undocumented child population overnight, nearly doubling it [the numbers of existing undocumented children],” said Kamena Dorling, group head of policy and public affairs at Coram.
A report by the body cautioned that a lack of legal advice and assistance was likely to exacerbate matters, leaving the children at the mercy of poor decision-making processes and the absence of a right of appeal in the event the UK left the EU without a withdrawal agreement.
Thus, thousands of the children risk becoming a new “Windrush generation,” the center noted.
The generation refers to the Caribbean children, who came to the UK decades ago and later suffered at the hands of the Home Office’s unfriendly treatment.
Britons voted in favor of the country’s departure from the European Union in a referendum on June 23, 2016.
The country has to sever its ties with the bloc towards the end of this month, but Parliament has twice nixed an agreement devised by Prime Minister Theresa’s Conservative government on the future of bilateral ties with the Union.
The legislature is now trying to buy a three-month delay to the separation for the government to devise a better deal.
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