British Citizenship

[ANGELA LIMA]

I came to UK in 2015 and I am from Portugal.I worked in the UK all this period and I never bothered to apply for a settled status at the time. I left UK after 6 years to look after my sick parents . I want to return now in 2024.

I would like to know how can I have my rights regulated :

1) Can I be a British Citizen at this point as I lived her for so long?

2)If not, which category can I apply for?

Thanks

[alterhase58]

I came to UK in 2015 and I am from Portugal.I worked in the UK all this period and I never bothered to apply for a settled status at the time. I left UK after 6 years to look after my sick parents . I want to return now in 2024.

I would like to know how can I have my rights regulated :

1) Can I be a British Citizen at this point as I lived her for so long?
No, citizenship requires that you hold permanent residency, either EU Settled Status or ILR under UK immigration rules.

2)If not, which category can I apply for?
On the face of it it would be a UK work visa, you would start from zero. Unless somebody can suggest how you could gain EUSS having missed all deadlines and probably unable to apply as a late applicant.

Thanks

[secret.simon]

Did you apply for and get any form of documentation about your residence in the UK, either a Residence Certificate or a Document certifying Permanent Residence, before 2020? They would have been a blue coloured tri-fold card.

You could try applying for Settled Status when you are back in the UK (it is a free application), but it is highly likely to fail given that you have been absent from the UK for three years (Permanent Residence under the pre-Brexit EEA Regulations/EU Directive would have lapsed automatically after any single absence for more than two years).

If you do get Settled Status, which, as alterhase58 mentioned above is a requirement to apply for British citizenship, you won't qualify to apply to naturalise as a British citizen for a few years.

To start with, you need to have held ILR/Settled Status for at least one year before the date of naturalisation application.

To add to that, there are absences and physical presence conditions counting back from the date of naturalisation application have to be met.

For instance, if I applied for naturalisation today, I would have to prove that
(a) I had ILR/Settled Status before 08/04/2023,
(b) I was physically present in the UK on 09/04/2019 (five years before today)
(c) I was not absent from the UK for more than 450 days outside the UK between the date in (b) and today.

Having lived in the UK for any five years in the past is not enough. It needs to be the five years immediately before the date of naturalisation application.

So, to summarise
(a) You can apply for Settled Status, but you are highly likely to be refused.
(b) If you do get Settled Status, it will be a few (at least three+) years before you become eligible to apply to naturalise as a British citizenship.