The British government cannot put an end to the Free Movement migration regime after Brexit because it will have no means of telling which EU nationals have a right to be in the country and which do not, experts say.
The EU requires its member-states to open themselves to unlimited and effectively unvetted intra-bloc migration, which has seen millions of people shift from relatively low-pay economies in central, eastern, and southern Europe to relatively high-pay welfare states such as the United Kingdom.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has pledged to deliver Brexit on its latest deadline of October 31st, says Free Movement will end on that day “whatever the circumstances” — but, with EU migrants arriving legally before that date entitled to “settled status”, experts believe this pledge cannot be delivered, as the government will have no means of telling who is and is not entitled to be in the country.
“Even if the government knew exactly what it wanted the post-Brexit immigration system to look like, it wouldn’t be possible to implement it immediately after a no-deal Brexit,” claimed Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.
“That’s because any new restrictions on EU migration can’t be enforced unless UK employers know which EU citizens have been here for years and which ones arrived post-Brexit and have to comply with the new immigration regime,” she explained.
Some business figures appear to concur, with Recruitment and Employment Confederation campaigns director Tom Hadley complaining “It is hard to believe that government continues to leave businesses and EU citizens in the dark, with such little clarity on the biggest questions with just 10 weeks to go” in comments to the BBC.
The British government’s lack of preparedness for such questions may be due to the fact that figures within the previous administration under Theresa May, particularly the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip ‘Remainer Phil’ Hammond, are said to have “actively prevented” the country from preparing itself for a No Deal Brexit, seemingly in order to buttress their claims that No Deal would be too disruptive.