3
million Brexit headaches
Politicians
of all sides want EU nationals living in the UK to remain but the
practicalities are a mystery.
By CHARLIE
COOPER 12/28/16, 5:31 AM CET
LONDON — Brexit
was meant to be an escape from red tape.
But one consequence
of Britain’s departure from the European Union is a bureaucratic
task of biblical proportions: The registration of approximately 3
million citizens of other EU countries living in the U.K. who want
the right to remain once Britain has left the bloc.
Current estimates
based on existing processes suggest it could take more than 150 years
to grant permanent residence to these people without a new system.
While there is political consensus in Westminster that Britain should
guarantee the long-term residency rights of “the 3 million,”
precisely how to make that happen remains a mystery.
The task, experts
say, could become an administrative nightmare and the U.K.’s Home
Office is being advised to look to the U.S., with its experience of
mass immigrant naturalization programs, for guidance.
Computer says no
British Prime
Minister Theresa May wants to resolve the matter as soon as possible,
but her offer of a joint guarantee of “reciprocal rights” – of
EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU – was
rebuffed by Brussels and by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who want
any deal to be thrashed out during the wider Brexit talks. May has
since resisted calls at home for a unilateral guarantee.
However, most
analysts expect a deal to be struck early in the Brexit talks, which
will commence after Article 50 is triggered at the end of March.
At
the current rate at which the government processes permanent
residence cards it would take more than 150 years to clear the 2.8
million applications that could be received, according to one recent
estimate.
Officials at the
Home Office are already working behind the scenes to establish the
most effective registration program, but remain tight-lipped about
what that might look like. Home Secretary Amber Rudd has made clear
in the House of Commons that those EU expats who get the right to
remain will need “some form of documentation,” a comment that
suggests a mass registration program that would need to be launched
soon after a deal on reciprocal rights is agreed.
“We have a
population of people, we know they exist, we have estimates of the
numbers but not a list of their names; they haven’t necessarily
been obliged to be in contact with the government in any way and
there is a need for a process for people to come forward, register
and be given some form of documentation if they’re eligible for
it,” said Madeleine Sumption, director of the University of
Oxford’s Migration Observatory.
There are few
historical precedents for the administrative challenge this will pose
the Home Office, Sumption said, but noted parallels with the U.S.
naturalization programs that followed the Immigration Reform and
Control Act of 1986, under which 3 million undocumented migrants
applied for legal status. “That would be an interesting thing to
look at in terms of a precedent,” Sumption said.
That program
required a vast network of local offices to be set up where
applicants could be interviewed and their paperwork reviewed.
Doris Meissner, who
heads the U.S. immigration policy program at Washington D.C.’s
Migration Policy Institute and was commissioner of the U.S.
Immigration and Naturalization Service between 1993 and 2000, said
that advances in technology mean that such programs could be carried
out more efficiently today, particularly if the government minimized
the paperwork required as evidence of residence.
However, even the
simplest approach — requiring EU citizens to present at a local
office with documentation, to receive a new stamp in their passport
denoting their special status — would be “a huge lift” for the
Home Office, she said. To minimize the risks of error or fraud, it is
likely that people would have to be seen in person, Meissner added.
“You’d have to
establish places all over the country for this to take place. I don’t
think you could do this online. Perhaps you could arrange the
appointments online, for people to be called in to offices around the
country … but the likelihood is, somebody will have to see that
passport,” she said.
Paperwork mountain
Current Home Office
procedures for those applying for permanent residence, campaigners
fear, are not up such a massive task.
A report earlier
this month by the British Future think tank estimated that, at the
current rate at which the government processes permanent residence
cards — 18,064 were granted in 2015 — it would take more than 150
years to clear the 2.8 million applications it predicted could be
received. The report, led by MPs from across the political spectrum,
recommended a cut-off date of the day Article 50 is triggered —
likely to be in March 2017 — with EU citizens resident prior to
that date entitled to apply to stay.
Anne-Laure Donskoy,
a French academic researcher, resident in the U.K. for 30 years, and
the founding co-chair of The 3 Million, a pressure group set up to
lobby for the residency rights of Britain’s remaining EU citizens,
said the group was predicting trouble for the Home Office in its
efforts to grant these people the documentation required so that they
can be recognized by public services and border guards.
Amber Rudd speaks at
the Tory party conference
Amber Rudd speaks at
the Tory party conference | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
“This department
has always been understaffed … It will take time and cost dear to
recruit and train a lot of new officers to meet this task
adequately,” she said.
There are also
concerns around the mountain of paperwork that millions of people
could be required to provide, Donksoy said.
“For those who
[currently] qualify to apply for permanent residency, it is not just
five years’ worth of documentation that is required,” she said.
“If you have been here longer, you also need to provide evidence
of: any welfare benefits you have ever received, with accurate
amounts per person; justification [such as] travel documentation,
letters from employers, any leave of absence from the country over 24
hours. We feel this is grossly unreasonable … We would like a very
much simplified process.”
The Home Office is
trialing new online application forms for EU citizens seeking
permanent residence, to make the process more straightforward, but
this project pre-dates the Brexit vote. Precisely what the government
is doing to prepare for the daunting task ahead remains unclear.
Meanwhile, according
to a consultation document published Tuesday, plans to combat
electoral fraud could include voluntary, local registers of those
without voting rights, which would include non-U.K. nationals and
could assist in the registration process.
The Home Office
spokesman declined to comment on whether advice had been sought from
the U.S. government, whether the registration program would require a
network of local offices, whether additional staff were being brought
on board to cope, or whether fees would be required.
“There are a
number of options as to how EU migration might work once we have left
including regarding documentation,” the spokesman said. “We are
considering those various options and it would be wrong to set out
further positions at this stage.”
Authors:
Charlie Cooper
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