Fate of EU citizens in the UK post Brexit

[zahir]

Labour to abstain on immigration bill. Thread:

 

[zahir]

 

[agricola]

Labour to abstain on immigration bill. Thread:

10p says Chris Leslie and the rest would have abstained if it was a three line whip to oppose, on the basis that it didn't take into account the concerns hard working families have about etc etc etc.

 

[zahir]

A partial u-turn from Labour.

Brexit: May tells Tory MPs to back amendment to replace backstop – Politics live


Thread:

 

[zahir]

Labour Forced Into Embarrassing U-Turn On Tory Immigration Bill After Backlash From MPs | HuffPost UK

Labour makes abrupt U-turn over immigration bill vote

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, had sparked a backlash among MPs when she told the House of Commons the frontbench would not vote against the post-Brexit legislation.

“The Labour party is clear that when Britain leaves the single market, freedom of movement ends, and we set this out in our 2017 manifesto. I am a slavish devotee of that magnificent document: so on that basis, the frontbench of the Labour party will not be opposing this bill this evening,” she said.

She added that Labour would abstain at this stage, known as second reading, and seek amendments later.

 

[ska invita]

When is this vote? I thought at 10 tonight? I presume it will pass as what Tory + DUP wouldn't vote for it.

 

[zahir]

The HuffPost report says at 10. I think there were a couple of Tories saying they’d vote against.

e2a:

Following a division, MPs have voted to support the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill at second reading.

In all, 234 voted against the bill, but 297 voted in favour.

 

[CRI]

The HuffPost report says at 10. I think there were a couple of Tories saying they’d vote against.

e2a:

Yes, Tories Kenneth Clarke and Anna Navarro voted against. Passed second reading 297 for, 234 against. I guess 78 Labour MPs were washing their hair tonight.

 

[CRI]

I'm seeing there were 76 Labour abstentions not 78, so two MPs must have had permission slips (I think one just gave birth - fair enough then.) Had there been a three line Labour whip for noe, it's just possible the bill would have died tonight.

And a reminder what this bill is about.

 

[zahir]

 

[Idris2002]

My wife has just tried the scheme, it wouldn’t scan her resident permit, the message was that British citizens need not apply for settled status, she’s Canadian.

Anyhow after some calls to the home office I was told that she needed the biometric residence card for proof that she’s an EU family member. However the home office back in 2014 said she would never need one.

We now have to wait till the end of March to apply. Oh well.

Has anyone given you a firm position on the status of Irish people? Before I folded my tent and vanished into the night, I did read something claiming that the consensus that we have automatic permanent leave to remain was wrong. . .

 

[flypanam]

Has anyone given you a firm position on the status of Irish people? Before I folded my tent and vanished into the night, I did read something claiming that the consensus that we have automatic permanent leave to remain was wrong. . .

According to the civil servant at the home office that I spoke to, we do not have apply for settled status.

For the moment it's same as it ever was...

I've read this Ireland Act 1949 - Does it Protect Irish Nationals Living in the UK? | Fragomen which doesn't fill me with hope.

eta: Brexit- Immigration Update

 

[butchersapron]

Has anyone given you a firm position on the status of Irish people? Before I folded my tent and vanished into the night, I did read something claiming that the consensus that we have automatic permanent leave to remain was wrong. . .

Nothing has changed. The deliberate attempt by the EU and remain media to stir up fears had my (leave voting) mum on the phone to various bodies about this and was clearly told there is some right rubbish being put about.

 

[Idris2002]

Nothing has changed. The deliberate attempt by the EU and remain media to stir up fears had my (leave voting) mum on the phone to various bodies about this and was clearly told there is some right rubbish being put about.

Hmmm. The story as I heard it was that this was an opinion expressed by an anti-immigration clique in the Home Office.

 

[flypanam]

Hmmm. The story as I heard it was that this was an opinion expressed by an anti-immigration clique in the Home Office.

It probably is an opinion held there, but for now it's all fine. Irish citizens are not subject to change(yet) so unless you've a partner from the EU or outside it, as they will have to apply for settled status.

 

[Gramsci]

Has anyone given you a firm position on the status of Irish people? Before I folded my tent and vanished into the night, I did read something claiming that the consensus that we have automatic permanent leave to remain was wrong. . .

I have posted up here about this.

There are issues for Irish citizens if UK leaves.

In the immigration bill passed last night there is section ensuring continuing rights of Irish citizens living here.

Due probably from pressure of a few Labour MPs.

Whether this is firm gaurentee for long term future of Irish people I don't know yet.

 

[DexterTCN]

EU citizens working in the civil service have been told that they won't be deported and 'will be fine', a message from on high.

It hasn't helped.

 

[Gramsci]

Has anyone given you a firm position on the status of Irish people? Before I folded my tent and vanished into the night, I did read something claiming that the consensus that we have automatic permanent leave to remain was wrong. . .

found this analysis of the immigration bill. Here is bit on Irish citizens:

By inserting a new section 3ZA (Irish citizens) into section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971, clause 2 amends the Immigration Act 1971 to confirm that the rights of Irish citizens prevail. Therefore, irrespective of the end of free movement, Irish citizens will not require any leave to enter or remain in the UK. Significantly, this development seen as quite a positive step by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association because it enables “frontier workers” – i.e. Irish citizens working in Northern Ireland who cross the border frequently for work – to continue to carry on their activities without requiring leave. Clause 3 amends section 61 of the UK Borders Act 2007 to ensure that any references to “the Immigration Acts” across legislation include the Bill.

Analysis of the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Like I said previously this isn't due to May being generous towards migrants. Its due to pressure from Irish government and Labour MPs.

 

[Gramsci]

Here is previous post of mine on position of Irish nationals.


Government has promised Irish passport holders that they will not have to apply for "settled status". That they will be able to continue here as before.

The immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, said this.

The legal situation is not so clear. Irish nationals have rights here deriving from EU membership of Eire. These will go after Brexit leaving them to call back on previous agreements. Which aren't watertight. With what happened to Commonwealth citizens under Mays hostile environment recent history I would not gaurentee long term rights of those holding Eire citizenship living in UK.

The government's official position – restated by Nokes yesterday – is that the rights of the Irish in Britain are guaranteed by the Common Travel Area and the Ireland Act of 1949, which stipulated that neither Ireland nor its citizens were foreign for the purposes of UK law.

Here the good news story starts to fall apart. The Common Travel Area is a political agreement. It is non-binding and confers no legal rights upon Irish or British citizens. Contrary to what Nokes and the government appear to believe, its continued existence after Brexit won't guarantee that the Irish in Britain "have all of the access to benefits and services" they have now, just a preferential migration regime.

and

The inconvenient truth appears to be that most of the actual, legally-watertight privileges enjoyed by Irish people in Britain instead flow from EU citizenship. A report by leading migration barrister Simon Cox found in November that the existing settlement is a "patchwork that may fall apart under post-Brexit political and practical pressures" and said it was impossible to identify a single legal right explicitly conferred on Irish nationals by the 1949 act.

The rights to live, work, access the NHS for free, claim benefits and welfare, and that of British citizenship for children born to Irish parents will all be legally unclear should the government choose merely to keep things as they are in legal terms. Ditto the rights of Irish citizens who arrive from outside the CTA to live and work in the UK.

After Windrush, will the rights of the Irish in Brexit Britain really be safe?



Hopefully the guarantees put in the otherwise loathsome government immigration bill will help long-term future of Irish citizens living here.

BTW these issues haven't been due to " Remainers"whinging about Brexit. These are real issues that effect non UK citizens living in this Country.

Had Eire citizen I work with asking me about this today.

Its why I opposed Brexit. Whatever Brexiteers might say Brexit is a serious worry for non UK citizens here. Some of whom have lived here for years.

 

[Gramsci]

I asked my Spanish partner about this "settled status" scheme. She is worried. She has Spanish friends in London ( who I have met) who think Brexit and having to apply to stay here is crap. These are not highly paid middle class people. They are working class. Came here to work and have been building lives here.

My partner will fall few months short of getting "settled status" here. So is likely to get the inferior pre settled status. She is worried.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It's totally fucking shit, and Labour's shit stance makes it even worse - if there is a brexit and the tories get their shit schemes through, I would anticipate any future Labour govt doing fuck all to change it, just like they did fuck all to change the restrictions on immigrants from the Commonwealth first brought in by the tories.

Like you, this issue is my main reason to oppose brexit, it is my 'red line'.

 

[zahir]

Like you, this issue is my main reason to oppose brexit, it is my 'red line'.

Same here.

 

[T & P]

If the recent claim that British expats will get no free healthcare anymore in the event of a no-deal Brexit turned out to be true, that does mean we EU citizens living here will also lose free NHS access? Does anyone know if the settled status offers guaranteed free healthcare in any scenario?

 

[DexterTCN]

Depending on your (and your family if relevant) general health you may want to look into a private scheme for a period because no-one really knows yet.

Fuck knows if EHIC will still be available.

 

[zahir]

Thread on the right to rent. I can see this happening to a lot more people after brexit.



British man and family made homeless by Home Office after it blocks them from renting property

 

[zahir]

Agents 'turning away tenants because of no clarity of Right to Rent post-Brexit'

Cautious agents are already rejecting tenants because of a lack of any official guidance on compliance with Right to Rent, rather than risk £30,000 penalties.

The situation has been made worse by a new White Paper on immigration which, mystifyingly, has totally neglected to mention the post-Brexit future of Right to Rent checks.

ARLA says that with Brexit just weeks away, the lack of guidance is causing agents and landlords concern, particularly when new tenancies are being implemented and existing ones renewed.

A spokesperson said: “Freedom of movement means that if renting to an EU citizen, the agent currently takes a copy of the ID and stores it securely to show immigration authorities if challenged.

“These rules are likely – but it isn’t clear – to change post-Brexit.

“The expectation is that existing EU citizens living in the UK will be ‘protected’ but there are questions beyond April about what arrangements there will be for checks in relation to tenancy renewals and moving to a new property.

“In addition to this, if an agent or landlord currently grants a tenancy on the basis of time-limited ID (for example a visa) they need to do a follow-up check either on expiry or at 12 months.

“We are aware that lack of information about the future is leading some landlords to reject tenants with overseas ID now because of uncertainty and worry about problems and penalties post-Brexit when the rules change.

“Tenants, landlords and agents are suffering through lack of attention to this issue.

“Agents are acutely aware that the consequences could lead to penalties of £3,000 per tenant if the agent is found to have housed an ineligible tenant.”

 

[ska invita]

Some broad strokes about the immigration white paper, including its implications
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/...overnment-still-wants-your-trust-on-migration

 

[zahir]

Brexit's Destruction Of British And EU Citizens' Rights Will Tear Families Apart - RightsInfo

Fiona Godfrey was born and raised in Yorkshire and currently lives in Luxembourg with her German-Chilean husband and two children. As Brexit looms Fiona outlines how the UK’s restrictive family reunification rules will become even tougher and the stripping of her EU citizen rights could result in her family splitting up. Millions of British citizens currently living in the EU could also be affected.

In March 1987 I was sharing a house in Sheffield with my German-Chilean student boyfriend, who is a German citizen, when we woke up to a letter from the Home Office advising him that he was not entitled to Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) – despite having lived in the UK since 1978 as a minor dependent and then a student – and that he may be in the UK illegally.

As luck would have it, our landlord was an immigration adviser. We showed him the letter and his response was, “But you are German, how can you have an immigration problem?” This was swiftly followed by advice to get married. We were students and not inclined to let the Home Office decide when and to whom we got married so we ignored this advice, but this turned out to be the standard response of several other immigration lawyers we contacted who all agreed that he didn’t have a problem.

Unfortunately, the Home Office disagreed so we set off on an 18-month journey through what is now called the Hostile Environment, but was then simply UK immigration policy, representing ourselves. The adjudicator at the first immigration hearing was so biased against my boyfriend that the Home Office lawyer wrote out grounds for appeal on a scrap of paper in the corridor outside the room. At the Immigration Appeal Tribunal hearing the following spring the Chair expressed astonishment at my boyfriend’s lack of (qualified) legal representation. The case adjourned so he could try again to find a lawyer. It was in fact adjourned forever as, six months later, the Home Office wrote to say that Miguel had been granted Indefinite Leave to Remain.

In 1992 he was offered a job in Luxembourg, which he accepted. In 1995 we finally got round to getting married and had to decide where to live. I was keen to exercise my free movement rights and joined him in Luxembourg. I did so knowing that although he had lost his Indefinite Leave to Remain by then he could easily get it back by returning to the UK to exercise his free movement rights as an EU citizen.

Fast forward to February 2016 and David Cameron’s triumphant unveiling of the agreement that he hoped would keep us in the EU. He came back from Brussels with virtually nothing but one of the bones tossed to him was agreement that the UK need not apply the Surinder Singh case law to UK nationals returning from the EU with their non-EU spouses.

The Surinder Singh immigration route means that British citizens with family from outside the European Economic Area can apply for an European Economic Area family permit if they have lived in another European Economic Area with the family member they hope to bring to the UK. For example under EU law a British citizen living and working with their American spouse in the European Economic Area, such as in Paris or Dublin, would be able to return to the UK and settle without having to pass the £18, 600 minimum income requirement stipulated under UK law.

I read Cameron’s agreement in some amazement. For example, was a British woman returning to Basingstoke from Budapest with a Brazilian husband such a threat to the integrity of the UK that Cameron had made it a key negotiating priority to keep them out? It turned out it was and that the EU had agreed to it because Cameron needed a “win” on “immigration.” It was a visible block on free movement but they could live with it if it made the threat of Brexit go away.

As we now know, it wasn’t anywhere near enough red meat to satisfy the anti-free movement brigade and the UK voted to leave the EU on 23 June 2016. Overnight, EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU27 found themselves on the frontline of the Brexit withdrawal agreement negotiations. Unsurprisingly, family reunification became one of several hills the UK would choose to die on in the citizens’ rights chapter. The EU pushed back and secured important concessions but again chose not to defend the right of UK citizens to return with foreign partners. It was a matter of national immigration law. The UK was leaving the EU and could treat its citizens as it pleased.

As a member of the British in Europe citizens’ rights advocacy team it soon became clear that tens of thousands of UK nationals will be affected by the loss of our EU family reunification rights. In a survey of a UK citizens group I run in Luxembourg, 50% of respondents in relationships had non-British partners and this seems to be reflected across the EU27.

We raised this repeatedly in meetings in London with Department for Exiting the EUcivil servants (DExEU). The response was unequivocal: The government did not want us to have more rights than a UK citizen who had not lived in the EU27 who had married a non-EU national. We argued we had moved in the expectation of retaining our EU rights for our lifetimes. We argued that over 60% of British citizens in the EU27 had not had a vote in the referendum and – most importantly – we argued for a levelling up of rights for all, not a levelling down. The UK has some of the most restrictive family reunification rules in the world and this was an opportunity for the government to show some good will and put right a huge wrong. We got nowhere with this argument because it wasn’t DExEU negotiating the citizens’ rights chapter in the Withdrawal Agreement but the Home Office.

Where does this leave me? I am a 53 year-old woman with a German spouse and two dual national children, one still at school in Luxembourg, the other, a student in the Netherlands. I am also the daughter of an 82-year old mother in the UK who suffers from multiple serious health conditions. She is months away from needing social care and I don’t know who will provide it. If the care provider turns out to be me, the Withdrawal Agreement would provide a transition period until the end of 2020 allowing me to return to the UK with my foreign spouse under the current more favourable EU rules. If my mother needs care before December 2020 that’s doable. But the Withdrawal Agreement looks to be dead.

If we end up in a no deal situation my rights and those of my spouse fall away at midnight on 29 March 2019. Like so many others before me, I then have a stark choice: my husband or my mother. I could invite my mother to live with me in Luxembourg – in a worse-case scenario I could rely on my husband’s family reunification rights as a German exercising his free movement rights in Luxembourg.

But it seems ridiculous and cruel to expect my severely ill mother to leave her home of over 80 years to live in a country with three national languages, none of which she speaks, just because Theresa May wants to block my economically active and highly skilled German husband from moving to live in the UK. This inhumane policy has to change. For everybody.

Fiona Godfrey speaks briefly near the start of this video.

 

[ska invita]

This isnt on the subject of EU citizens but I think this paragraph is going to apply post March 2021
Home Office 'wrecked my life' with misuse of immigration law

Appealing against a decision can take years, during which time the applicant cannot work or rent property, and neither they nor their immediate family can use the NHS. Many feel forced to appeal because accepting the decision makes it highly unlikely they will ever get a visa for any other country.

it takes years now, so....

 

[zahir]

One family’s Brexit dilemma: ‘I’ll fight to keep us together until the very last day’

It is the worst kind of choice: does Patricia Goossens lose her Belgian husband and their family’s only guaranteed source of income, or does she abandon her home in Scotland and leave her autistic adult daughter behind?

“I could stay put and lose my husband, who is disabled and needs me, and I love him and don’t want to be parted from him,” Patricia told the Observer. “But when I go with him, I lose my daughter, whom I also love and who also needs me.”