https://arab.news/w9s38
- ‘This is how hard it is to be an immigrant in England,’ says Hussen Mohamed
LONDON: A Somali-Dutch national who faced years of delays with his British immigration status after the government mistook him for his murderer twin brother has been given temporary status, despite being eligible for permanent settlement.
Hussen Mohamed, 27, who lives in London, told The Independent that he was “disgusted” after receiving a letter saying that he had only limited freedom to remain in Britain, despite living in the country for the past 17 years.
Mohamed, a graduate of SOAS University of London, used his Dutch nationality to apply for the EU settlement scheme in November 2019 to acquire post-Brexit immigration status in Britain.
Without the EU settled status, which he has been waiting to be processed for two-and-a-half years, Mohamed said that he was struggling to find work and had been regularly detained at British airports, making him feel like a “third-class citizen.”
The Independent contacted the UK Home Office last month to inquire about Mohamed’s case after reporting on the irregularity, when it emerged that the government department had mistakenly identified Hussen as his twin brother, Hassan, who was convicted of murder in 2018 after fatally stabbing a man in West London.
The Home Office issued a statement apologizing for the mistake and delay, noting that it was “working urgently” to resolve the error.
But days after The Independent published its report into the delay and the Home Office statement, Mohamed received a letter from the Home Office outlining that he had been granted pre-settled status, which provides EU nationals with five years of right to remain in Britain, but which must be renewed before the expiration of the term.
Mohamed told The Independent that the Home Office had not apologized: “There’s been no phone call, no text, no ‘sorry for the complication.’ Nothing. They know my situation now. They’ve got my email address. They’ve got every version of a contact detail in front of them.
“And now they don’t even give me settled status. It’s incompetence. It’s sad, it’s ridiculous. They’re wasting money and time. It doesn’t make sense. There’s a bureaucracy that doesn’t work.
“The fact that I had to go to the media in the first place is wrong. How is it that a journalist can provide more information about my case than they can? This is how hard it is to be an immigrant in England.
“They should apologize to me and understand what they’ve done is beyond neglectful.”
Andreea Dumitrache, spokesperson for the3million, a grassroots organization for EU citizens in the UK, told The Independent: “It’s unacceptable that after years of being held in limbo, facing significant repercussions due to the Home Office’s incompetency, Hussen still hasn’t been granted indefinite leave to remain, despite living in the UK since he was a child.
“He still has not received an apology or an explanation. This would not happen under a fair and humane immigration system. We urgently need to see evidence of the culture change promised by the government in the wake of the Windrush scandal.”