Thread by @Schroedinger99

1/ Let me try and explain the issue with EU citizens in the event of no deal - the issue that @carolinenokes, Minister of State for Immigration, got so wrong:

2/ Currently, if you apply for a job or try to rent a house or register with a GP, you will probably be asked to show a passport or provide similar proof of ID. If such a check establishes that you are British or an EEA citizen, you've passed.

3/ The UK government is currently setting up a system for ~3.8 million EU citizens (they haven't yet decided what happens to Swiss, Norwegian and other EEA citizens who are not EU citizens) to apply for "settlement" - ie permission to continue living in the UK, at £65 a pop.

4/ The system was supposed to be up and running by now but it looks as though it won't open fully until March 2019. People will then have until 30 June 2021 to apply and @ukhomeoffice are obviously praying that applications will be staggered.

5/ You will only be able to apply if you can provide evidence that you arrived in the UK before December 2020.

6/ The system is currently being tested and about 600 "guinea-pigs" (all straightforward cases) have applied so far. Taking the most optimistic view possible, we can assume that all 3.8 million will have been granted or refused settlement by (say) end September 2021.

7/ Successful applicants will not get a card/document. They will receive a number that employers, landlords, NHS staff will, when the system is created, be able to type into a government website and find out whether the individual concerned has permission to live and work here.

8/ So, assuming this all goes as hoped, the plan (under the bits of the withdrawal agreement that have thus far been provisionally agreed) was that things would continue just the same as now until December 2020.

9/ Thereafter, anyone arriving from the EU to live and work here will have to apply under some new yet-to-be-invented immigration rules. So between December 2020 and (say) October 2021 there will already be two categories of EU citizens who cannot evidence their statuses:

10/
1) EU citizens who were here before December 2020* but have not yet obtained a settlement-number.
2) EU citizens who came here after December 2020 but have not got a visa/work-permit or whatever they will need to live/work here (ie they will be here illegally).

11/
*I am glossing over the complication of whether pre-December 2020 residents have been here 5 years or less. That doesn't really matter for our purposes today.

12/ The only possible conclusion is that it will be impossible for employers, landlords, and NHS staff to start checking anything - other than whether an EU citizen has a valid passport/ID-card - until late 2021.

13/ Until late 2021, there will simply be no way to check whether an EU citizen with only a passport/ID is entitled to be living and working here or not. After late 2021, employers, landlords, and NHS staff will be able to demand either a settlement-number or a work-permit/visa.

14/ Everything above assumes a successful Withdrawal Agreement and an orderly Brexit. The question thus arises as to what happens if there is no WA and we crash out of the EU on 30 March 2019 - the question that was put to @carolinenokes on 2018-10-30: parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/2f…

15/ Nokes's chilling answer was that, in the event of no WA, FoM would end on 31 March 2019 and employers, landlords, and NHS staff would immediately be legally required to start demanding either a settlement-number or a work-permit/visa from EU citizens on that date.

16/ Since the vast majority of EU citizens currently living here won't have a settlement number on 2019-03-31 - and quite possibly won't get one before late 2021 - the implication was that such people would be unable to get a new job or rental lease or register with a new GP;

17/
... and would be unable to renew an existing employment contract or rental lease.

18/
When it was pointed out to Nokes by an incredulous select committee that what she was suggesting would be quite impossible to administer, she disagreed. She did however concede it would be "challenging".

19/
Since the Select Committee members were manifestly right here and Nokes's suggestions were manifestly completely demented, @sajidjavid quickly stepped in to set the record straight: theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/n…

20/ Javid basically confirmed that, even if there is no WA, things will continue much as planned under a WA. A new regime will only kick in once until the required systems are actually in place.

21/
So @carolinenokes has, once again, been shown to be completely out of her depth as Minister of State for Immigration and has been suitably admonished. But that's not the really shocking thing here.

22/
The really shocking thing is that our Minister of State for Immigration is so obsessed with achieving her goal - of preventing EU citizens coming freely to the UK - as quickly as she possibly can that she is prepared to countenance ....

23/
... not just the crippling of our economy, the trashing of our international reputation, and the break up of the UK (after all, most Brexiters are perfectly sanguine about those consequences) but also ...

24/
... hundreds of thousands of EU citizens and their (often UK) family members being made destitute and homeless and denied medical treatment in order to achieve her goal.

25/
Such is the state of our country today. Reason and compassion replaced by irrationality and hate.

This cursed plot, this mire, this tyranny, this England!