Laurence Sauvage-Lumb, who has lived in the UK for 15 years, says she was made to feel like a criminal.
The 52-year-old mum, originally from Lille, was returning from France after a journey to visit the grave of her twin who died last year. When she arrived at passport control at Manchester airport, she was asked how long she was planning to stay in the country and then to ‘prove’ she lived in England.
Laurence told LancsLive that when asked for her passport she said
“I live here, and she said to me, well you’re French, so can you prove this? There was no mention of settled status; I was on the floor, I’ve never been so humiliated.”
According to Laurence, the error was down to a ‘glitch’ which she says may have occurred because she had renewed her passport, and her ‘settled’ status, showing continuous residence of five years in the UK, is linked to her old passport.
She said
“For 48 hours after I was fuming. This is a consequence of Brexit and this is how we are starting to be treated in England now. I have never really experienced anything like that – and you don’t have any right of reply about how you are being treated in that situation.
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