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Are you worried about the mess around settled status or think it will blow over?
I am very worried. But then I'm also Swiss, so not actually an EU citizen, but of a citizenship 'tacked on' to EU citizenship rules. I don't know whether that makes the situation better or worse for me (I'm going to go with worse: even if they arrange something for EU citizens, they'll forget about Swiss etc. people). However, I have a possible 'out' as I could 'upgrade' to being a full-time student again, which is probably going to be easier to get leave to remain for.
I also considered getting the settlement thing that won't be valid after 03/19 for much the same reason as you, but the problem is that while I have been in the UK for 5 years now, 4 of those were as a student and they are a bit asshole-ish about that (and have always been), so it's unclear whether I'd actually qualify. But I definitely don't want to try and get rejected for it, that would mean 'being in the system' for all the wrong reasons.
My main worry here isn't that they won't figure out some kind of arrangement at all - if they don't, the UK economy will pretty literally start collapsing -, it's more that they will fuck it up in individual cases. I don't fancy being windrushed, but considering the general competency levels in the home office, that's a very real possibility.
SwissChap-
Settled Status may work OK for you, it is just residency / identity / no serious criminal record and if hmrc has some data on you, happy days! The rules are quite more relaxed than the PR rules.
UKCEN is a good forum on Facebook, maybe they know more about the case for Swiss nationals.
They are currently in trial phase 2 for settled status. But yeah if there is no deal / a mess with paperwork and windrush v2 as people cannot prove they can work then the economy won't do so well either. Any Brexit harms the economy of course.
I'd register in any case once SS is out, because they also count student towards the total immigration numbers and they don't want to budge on that atm, so you better get in the system if you want to stay.
JWestland
I live in NI, and I am Dutch so I am exceptionally delighted :(
Are you worried about the mess around settled status or think it will blow over? They are really making a mess of it, expecting employers to be able to check people's immigration status but not actually having any bandwidth to process it all in time or processes around a no-deal...
I got my PR card just in case, it won't be valid after March 2019 but at least I am in the system.