A question for those who still support a Brexit

[tim]

A thread with a poll.

Government officials have put the number of EU citizens living in the UK who will fail to register for settled status as between 10-20%. This could well be an underestimation, but lets say its correct, thats somewhere between 380,000-760,000 people who will become illegal overnight [at present judgement day is June 2021].

As discussed in this thread these people will be unable to rent, work, access the NHS, have a bank account, in short live in the UK. They will be deportable if they dont leave of their own accord.

My question for this thread is: Is this a price worth paying so that Brexit passes? Are you still happy to have a Brexit with this as a conditionality?

My own position is that once Leave won and May said EU citizen rights were protected, I was relatively ambivalent to Brexit happening. But on discovering last xmas that so many people will become illegal, and those that have settled status will have a second class citizenship (again discussed in that linked thread), for me any Brexit that includes the Settled Status process must be stopped.
I dont think this was at all clear before the referendum.

POLL options:
I still want Brexit to happen and the Settled Status process is a price worth paying
I still want Brexit, but only one that doesn't include a Settled Status process (some kind of Freedom of Movement deal)
I supported Brexit but can no longer

You have a very patronising view of EU citizens resident here if you assume that that they are incapable of availing themselves of this right, particularly as they have to years to do do and everyone telling them that they need to do so.

There are plenty of good arguments against leaving, but this borderline racist tosh isn't one of them.

 

[krtek a houby]

i'm sure you do. on 23/6/16 i found out i was a reluctant remainer. i voted remain not because of a strange belief in the perfection of the eu, but because i felt that the uk remaining part of it was better than the alternative. i have never denied there are serious problems with the eu. i don't believe that a bosses' eu can offer the sort of society i want. the way the eu treats refugees is disgraceful. how greece has been treated is a travesty. but as far as i could see when i stood in the polling station having marked an x by leave the alternative wasn't any better. the way migrants are treated here is as abominable as the way they're treated elsewhere in the eu, and people with every right to be in the uk have been appallingly treated by the government. i appreciate that leaving the eu offers - or maybe offered - a way in which certain possibilities might be opened up. it seems to me that that is or was rather chimerical. anyway, the polling station staff didn't let me have a new ballot paper but handed me an eraser and i marked my x by remain in ink

That's an honest post. And well put.

(would take you off ignore on the basis of this but am not allowed)

 

[Spymaster]

No! Its not criminalising migrant workers!
It's making deportable children, adults, old people whose home is in Britain. It's nothing to do with "workers". I find it telling that you think of anyone here without British citizenship as a migrant worker

Why is applying for settled status going to be a problem for so many people? It’s not like it’s going to come as a surprise or that it’ll be difficult to qualify for.

 

[krtek a houby]

Why is applying for settled status going to be a problem for so many people? It’s not like it’s going to come as a surprise or that it’ll be difficult to qualify for.

Hostile environment?

 

[Spymaster]

Hostile environment?

What does that mean? People currently living here will be able to apply for settled status if they so wish. I don’t think it’s even going to cost them anything. What’s the problem?

 

[kebabking]

What does that mean? People currently living here will be able to apply for settled status if they so wish. I don’t think it’s even going to cost them anything. What’s the problem?

no no no, you're just getting it.

they're forrin, and therefore vunerable. granted they may have upped-sticks, moved to a new country with a new language, laws, culture etc... and built a new life here, but they are, by definition of being forrin, vunerable.

i wonder - for sport - whether a Brit who has lived on the Algarve for 5 years but not bothered to learn Portugese is also vunerable, or whether he's a massively self-entitled wanker, and doubtless also a cultural imperialist?

silly me, of course i know the answer to that....

 

[Spymaster]

no no no, you're just getting it.

they're forrin, and therefore vunerable. granted they may have upped-sticks, moved to a new country with a new language, laws, culture etc... and built a new life here, but they are, by definition of being forrin, vunerable.

i wonder - for sport - whether a Brit who has lived on the Algarve for 5 years but not bothered to learn Portugese is also vunerable, or whether he's a massively self-entitled wanker, and doubtless also a cultural imperialist?

silly me, of course i know the answer to that....

I’m wondering how vulnerable these people are. Several hundred thousand people already resident here, whose lives and livelihoods depend on it, can’t manage or can’t be arsed to apply for a free piece of paper. Why?

 

[redsquirrel]

What does that mean? People currently living here will be able to apply for settled status if they so wish. I don’t think it’s even going to cost them anything. What’s the problem?

Because even if it's free and easy some people will get caught out, they always do, that's the purpose of these schemes. It's another barrier, another hurdle to migrants. Why was the universalism of child benefit stopped, why do benefit claimants have to jump through so many hoops, to make it harder for them, to build a hostile environment.

I don't agree with most of what ska's posted but he's right that this is nasty shit.

 

[Spymaster]

Because even if it's free and easy some people will get caught out, they always do, that's the purpose of these schemes. It's another barrier, another hurdle to migrants. Why was the universalism of child benefit stopped, why do benefit claimants have to jump through so many hoops, to make it harder for them, to build a hostile environment.

I don't agree with most of what ska's posted but he's right that this is nasty shit.

Nonsense. A handful of people will get caught out, as you put it, and then they’ll get sorted out late etc, but most will just do what they need to do over the next 2 years without a by your leave. They’re not fucking morons. If you live in a country other than the one you hold citizenship of, you might have to do a bit of paperwork. Get over it. Millions of people all over the world manage this all the time. Why do so many people insist that Europeans in the UK are particularly incapable?

 

[krtek a houby]

no no no, you're just getting it.

they're forrin, and therefore vunerable. granted they may have upped-sticks, moved to a new country with a new language, laws, culture etc... and built a new life here, but they are, by definition of being forrin, vunerable.

i wonder - for sport - whether a Brit who has lived on the Algarve for 5 years but not bothered to learn Portugese is also vunerable, or whether he's a massively self-entitled wanker, and doubtless also a cultural imperialist?

silly me, of course i know the answer to that....

Forriners, they be self entitled wankers and cultural imperialists now.

 

[SpackleFrog]

i'm just against the bullying of workers. doesn't matter if they're migrant or not. doesn't matter if the bullying comes from bosses, co-workers or indeed governments.

if you voted leave but without supporting the obvious result of actually leaving i have to question if you knew what you were doing then and if you know what you are doing now

Yeah alright I didn't think it was neccessary to make clear I'm against the bullying of all workers but for absolute clarity I'm against the bullying of *all* workers.

I voted Leave primarily to make life as difficult as possible for the Tories, without ever thinking Britain would actually leave, and still don't - neither do you remember, you're confident they'll revoke A50. The obvious result of a leave vote to me was to split the Tory party in half trying to sort out what it would do about it. However I do want to leave the EU, in fact I want the EU to collapse. That doesn't mean I want to leave on the basis of a Tory govt attacking EU workers who live here, I want the Tory govt to collapse as well. For all of Corbyn's faults I thought one of the best things he's ever said is what he put forward at the last GE - a jobs first, workers Brexit with no new immigration controls.

 

[redsquirrel]

Nonsense. A handful of people will get caught out, as you put it, and then they’ll get sorted out late etc, but most will just do what they need to do over the next 2 years without a by your leave. They’re not fucking morons. If you live in a country other than the one you hold citizenship of, you might have to do a bit of paperwork. Get over it. Millions of people all over the world manage this all the time. Why do so many people insist that Europeans in the UK are particularly incapable?

This is astounding naive, look at how benefit claimants are treated, look at how asylum seekers are treated, look at the hostile environment and the wind rush saga, look at people applying for housing benefit or secure accommodation.

And maybe people will get sorted out later but in the meantime some of these people will have gone through shit.

 

[butchersapron]

This is astounding naive, look at how benefit claimants are treated, look at how asylum seekers are treated, look at the hostile environment and the wind rush saga, look at people applying for housing benefit or secure accommodation.

And maybe people will get sorted out later but in the meantime some of these people will have gone through shit.

Yes, bureaucracy can be a weapon. A very powerful one.

 

[Pickman's model]

I voted Leave primarily to make life as difficult as possible for the Tories,

part of the reason i didn't vote leave was because the most prominent tories on the leave side were more objectionable - marginally but more nonetheless - than the most prominent tories on the remain side

 

[kebabking]

Forriners, they be self entitled wankers and cultural imperialists now.

so explain to me - perhaps in crayon, because i'm a thicky racist - how someone from an EU 27 country who lives in the UK but speaks very little English is vunerable, but a Brit who retires to Portugal but never gets passed 'por favor' is just a massive twat?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

You have a very patronising view of EU citizens resident here if you assume that that they are incapable of availing themselves of this right, particularly as they have to years to do do and everyone telling them that they need to do so.

There are plenty of good arguments against leaving, but this borderline racist tosh isn't one of them.

That's similar to the argument made for means-tested benefits. They're entitled. They can apply - they just need to supply the evidence and they'll be fine. Ignoring the study after study after study showing clearly that creating hoops to jump through reduces uptake significantly.

Should the victims of the Windrush scandal have sorted themselves out? They had decades to do it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

so explain to me - perhaps in crayon, because i'm a thicky racist - how someone from an EU 27 country who lives in the UK but speaks very little English is vunerable, but a Brit who retires to Portugal but never gets passed 'por favor' is just a massive twat?

Hope you don't suffer from hayfever, all that straw flying around.

 

[SpackleFrog]

part of the reason i didn't vote leave was because the most prominent tories on the leave side were more objectionable - marginally but more nonetheless - than the most prominent tories on the remain side

Fair enough, but that does lead you into territory where you're determining that David Cameron is marginally less objectionable than Boris Johnson. Which for me is an impossible choice, they're both infinitely objectionable. In both cases their only redeeming feature is the level of damage they've managed to do to their own party.

 

[kebabking]

...Should the victims of the Windrush scandal have sorted themselves out? They had decades to do it.

i was rather under the impression that the problem with Windrush was that those involved were specifically told they did not have to sort it out, and that 50 years later they were told they did.

which doesn't really match the settled status scheme - at least not in principle.

 

[SpackleFrog]

so explain to me - perhaps in crayon, because i'm a thicky racist - how someone from an EU 27 country who lives in the UK but speaks very little English is vunerable, but a Brit who retires to Portugal but never gets passed 'por favor' is just a massive twat?

To be fair, I think the retiree emigrant is definitely less vulnerable than the migrant worker.

 

[krtek a houby]

so explain to me - perhaps in crayon, because i'm a thicky racist - how someone from an EU 27 country who lives in the UK but speaks very little English is vunerable, but a Brit who retires to Portugal but never gets passed 'por favor' is just a massive twat?

The only folk who throw around the word thicky and racist are the leavers. Your comments about those who read the Graun, etc.

There's nothing wrong with being concerned over those who will be in limbo or jeopardy, come Brexit. Be they transient, or long term residents. Or Irish, come to think of it.

 

[butchersapron]

The only folk who throw around the word thicky and racist are the leavers. Your comments about those who read the Graun, etc.

What a preposterous thing to say.

 

[TopCat]

What a preposterous thing to say.

Not the sharpest tool in the EU.

 

[krtek a houby]

Not the sharpest tool in the EU.

I'm thick, me

 

[andysays]

I'm thick, me

You apparently have a terrible memory as well

 

[TopCat]

I'm thick, me

More like Gavin Barwell. Stupid, arrogant, quick to play the victim and a total absence of self awareness.

 

[Spymaster]

This is astounding naive, look at how benefit claimants are treated, look at how asylum seekers are treated, look at the hostile environment and the wind rush saga, look at people applying for housing benefit or secure accommodation.

And maybe people will get sorted out later but in the meantime some of these people will have gone through shit.

What is naive is the notion that some form of registration of new status for people living in a country in which they don't hold citizenship would not be required, after that country leaves the bloc that bestows their current status. This was always going to happen in some form and that people will "go though some shit" is part of the deal. Everyone is going to go through some shit of one sort or the other. This is the biggest political change that many people will experience in their lifetimes and people are going to have to do things.

 

[krtek a houby]

You apparently have a terrible memory as well

Good, good, bring up the rancid beef and make it all about me again. Good.

My memory is fine, ta. I made some stupid comments about the Brexit result and was duly called out on it. Despite acknowledging this, on dozens of occasions, it's still used as a nice deflection.

 

[butchersapron]

Good, good, bring up the rancid beef and make it all about me again. Good.

My memory is fine, ta. I made some stupid comments about the Brexit result and was duly called out on it. Despite acknowledging this, on dozens of occasions, it's still used as a nice deflection.

From what?

 

[andysays]

Good, good, bring up the rancid beef and make it all about me again. Good.

My memory is fine, ta. I made some stupid comments about the Brexit result and was duly called out on it. Despite acknowledging this, on dozens of occasions, it's still used as a nice deflection.

You brought it up when you made the ridiculous claim above. So do you admit now that your claim was bollocks?