Monika receives British Citizenship at last.
“Last week I got my British Citizenship, which was really exciting as I’ve lived in the UK for the last 15 years.
“I moved to London from Poland when I was 8 years old so for most of teen and adult life I have felt British so it was important to me that I get my citizenship as soon as possible.
“Brexit really pushed my citizenship application forward as the security that I had to live in the UK as EU citizen was gone. Even with the EU Settlement Scheme, I didn’t feel secure in my right to stay in the UK as governments can be fickle, especially when it comes to immigration.
“Unfortunately, I couldn’t apply for my citizenship for a really long time due to loads of weird rules that the application process has. For example, you can’t apply for British Citizenship if you have left the country for longer than 90 days in the last year. When the Brexit vote happened, I was about to go on my year abroad so couldn’t apply and then because of that rule I couldn’t apply for a year after that, which longed out the process so much.
“And then I had to wait a year to apply after I got my settled status so as soon I was able to I applied, which was a long process as well as I had to do the Life in the UK test and provide documents to support my application. And then I had to wait 6 months after my application to find out if I got it. But now, I finally got my British Citizenship I’m really happy and proud to be officially British.”
