• Brexit.A contract of 30,000 euros and high level of English: the conditions to emigrate to the United Kingdom
  • UK.Brexit: chronology of a divorce

When the Italian Antonio Finelli arrived at the port of Folkestone in 1952 to join the reconstruction of the United Kingdom in the middle of the postwar period, he was welcomed with open arms, a week's anticipated pay and a sandwich. At 95, almost seven decades later and despite having received a pension for 32 years, Finelli has been forced to show 80 pages of bank statements to prove his stay in the country and achieve the status of "settled."

The British authorities insist that the process is very simple and that it goes like silk, that more than 2.7 million Europeans have already made the request to stay after Brexit and that 900,000 immigrants still have a year and a half (up to June 2021) to do it. However, it is rare that the week does not make headlines the bleeding case of Europeans who have spent decades in the United Kingdom and fail to regularize their situation, or who achieve as much as the provisional status of pre-settled (in 41% of cases) .

"I have worked here 70 years and I have been receiving even a pension, I do not know why I have to present more evidence," says Finelli, who once obtained an 'aliens certificate' and that over the years he benefited of freedom of movement. Apparently, his data was not digitized and that is why he was required to present evidence that he had been living in the country for more than five years.

Dimitri Scarlato , a volunteer who personally helped Finelli to process his application in the London district of Islingon, said he knew at least a hundred cases of European workers whose records do not appear in the digital archives. "They are people who have spent here almost all their lives, but the system treats them as if it does not exist," Scarlato denounces in 'The Guardian'. "There was the case of a woman who was so stressed that she thought she was having a heart attack with all the paperwork."

Ultimately, and thanks to the 80 pages provided by the bank, Antonio Finelli (who lost his wife and son but has British grandchildren) was able to process his request to regularize his situation as settled. Dozens of elderly European citizens, many of them confined in their own homes or with limited mobility, face the same situation.

Another notable case has been that of the Italian also Giovanni Palmiero , 101, who curiously met his countryman Antonio Finellli as a child in Italy. In the case of Palmiero, the system initially identified him as a one-year-old child (born in 2019 and not in 1919) and even required that his parents confirm his identity.

Again with the help of Dimitri Scarlato, who works with the3million group, Palmiero was able to unlock his request. Even so, they asked him for proof of having resided in the country for five years, despite having been working in the United Kingdom for 54 years, in a restaurant in Picadilly and in a 'fish & chips' establishment. Palmiero is married to a 92-year-old woman, Lucia, and has 11 British great-grandchildren.

"It is a humiliation for people like him," laments his son Assuntino. "He has been here all his life and suddenly something like this happens. In the end it is a nuisance more than anything else, it is clear that he will not be deported. But people of his age should not go through this. They would have to keep their right to stay in the UK automatically. "

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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