Two Polish citizens who have lived in the UK for nearly 80 years after their parents fled the second world war have spoken of their terrifying experience after being told they did not have post-Brexit rights to return to the UK.
In May, while visiting Poland, they learned that although they had been welcomed as refugees after the war, they now needed special post-Brexit paperwork to return to their home in Bury.
Maria Krupa, 85, and her husband, Czeslaw, 92, who met in the UK and went on to marry and settle in Bury in Greater Manchester, were issued with “aliens’ registration cards” and have travelled extensively as adults without anyone asking them for their immigration status.
Czeslaw, who came from Lviv which was then part of Poland, and Maria, who left her home town in what is now Belarus as an infant, had travelled to Poland in May to meet surviving family members.
But Ryanair refused to allow them to board the flight for their return journey on the grounds that they had neither proof of the right to live in the UK nor the new electronic travel authorisation (ETA) now required for foreign tourists entering the UK.
“It was a big shock,” said Maria. “We were very very disappointed and a bit upset because my husband takes a lot of medicine because of a stroke to his spinal cord.”
They arrived in Southhampton in 1947 and 1948 as the young dependants of displaced Polish service members who had been evacuated from their homes in 1940 and later became part of Gen Władysław Anders’ Polish army that served in Persia, India, the Middle East and Africa.
Anders’ army played a key role in the defeat of the Third Reich and had integrated into the British military command structure after friction with the Soviets in 1942.
“We tried to explain to Ryanair that our fathers fought for Poland and England in the war, but they refused to let us on the plane because they said they would have to pay a big fine,” said Maria.
“My husband was really upset,” she said, explaining that he was in a mobility scooter and was on a lot of medication after the stroke. He has difficulty getting in and out of cars and “just wanted to get home”, she added.
They are speaking out to help others who might be in the same position. “It was a big, big shock because we never heard of this and we never thought for one minute that after nearly 80 years someone would tell us we couldn’t go home,” said Maria.
Kate Smart, the chief executive of Settled, who helped the Krupas, said the charity was seeing “thousands of cases” like the Krupas. “It is a really common occurrence, almost on a daily basis,” she said.
The EU settlement scheme was launched in 2019 to give EU citizens living in the UK the documentary evidence needed to travel as they had done under the pre-Brexit, free-movement rules.
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Many of the people seen by Settled are elderly people who have British children and grandchildren. “They have nobody in their family circle who thinks like immigrants so they don’t talk about things like ‘settled status’,” said Smart.
Maria said she had never thought to get a British passport as she had never needed it in the previous 80 years and it had never crossed her mind. “It was really important. I didn’t think of it as sort of weakening my identity. I love England. I mean, I always say, I’m very grateful to England, you know, to have taken so many people, you know thousands after the war. But I just thought it was important that we stay Polish,” she said.
After being forced to leave the airport late on a Sunday night in May, they returned the next day with an ETA but the couple had to pose as tourists, claiming they lived in Poland as the online form would not accept their British address.
Maria said: “When we arrived in England we were terrified. We had to be careful about what we said. We were terrified because they started asking questions and we thought we are not going to lie again and have to tell the truth.”
After going to Citizens Advice in Bury, they were connected with Settled. Smart commended the Home Office resolution centre for its swift action after the charity submitted a no-time-limit application that resulted in settled status for the Krupas last week.
She appealed to the government to take note of the issues with the EU settlement scheme, arguing “a process should have kicked in at the airport” when an issue such as this one arose.
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
