She left the Netherlands for Britain in the 1970s at just 17. Now, after receiving a short suspended sentence, she faces removal to a country she hasn’t lived in for five decades or visited since 1999
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ast December, a letter from the Home Office dropped through Maria’s door. When she read it, she screamed. At 68, she lives with her disabled partner, Tom, who she cares for, in a rental home in west London, and has been resident in the UK for almost 50 years. The letter said the home secretary had decided to pursue her deportation. “The secretary of state has deemed your deportation to be conducive to the public good,” it continued, “and accordingly it is in the public interest that you be removed from the UK without delay.”
The only thing that ties Maria to the Netherlands, her birthplace, is, she says, her passport. For most of her five decades in residence in the UK, the country was part of the EU, so there was no need for her to apply for leave to remain. In January 2022, she was given EU Settled Status (EUSS), a form of indefinite leave to remain for EU and other European citizens who had been living in the UK for five years or more on 31 December 2020.
“I want to say to the Home Office: ‘Why can’t you just leave me be?’” she says. “I’m a carer. How can I start my life again at the age of 68 in a country I don’t know? Somebody at the Home Office who doesn’t know me … has made a decision about my life. Since I received the letter, I have had so many nightmares.”
