[mytailorisrich]

It is perfectly legal to enter the country and reside here as student.

But if you do not have health insurance this does not count towards gaining permanent residence (and thus citizenship thereafter).

If you need legal advice you should talk to a solicitor specialised in immigration law, not to a random person in a call centre.

[gambiting]

I did actually, and the immigration lawyer I spoke to said that the home office is wrong about this, because the EU doesn't specify any such requirement - just that if you lived in a member country for 5 years you automatically get the right to permanent residence there. That's it. There are no further conditions attached. So UK breaks this law by requiring anything extra, but her advice was that yes, it is entirely possible to take the Home Office to court over this and win, it's just going to take a lot of time and money(and I had neither).

And besides, it's just not some random people in the call centre - Home Office's own website said that you only reside in the UK legally if you are exercising your free movement rights - I mean, that clearly reads to me as "if you don't, you are here illegally". It can't work both ways.

[mytailorisrich]

> just that if you lived in a member country for 5 years you automatically get the right to permanent residence there

No, you need to meet additional criteria. This is explicit in EU law [1] (and very well covered online), so I'm puzzled as to the advice you received.

Since you were looking for a legal references regarding students, note that [1] is also explicit that students should have "comprehensive sickness insurance cover" (the dispute here is whether access to NHS qualifies. UK government argues that it does not).

[1] Article 7 of https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...