Thread by @37paday

1/ Imagine if:

2/ you were born and grew up in Sunderland

3/ you then trained to be a nurse and got a job at
Manchester Royal Infirmary

4/ you married a Mancunian and had a child

5/ you paid your taxes, your child went to the local school
and for a long time you had no real wage increase due to austerity. But you
stuck with it because you were committed to your job and the people you care
for

6/ one day Greater Manchester decided to hold a referendum
on whether to leave or remain in the UK

7/ you were not entitled to vote in the referendum but lots
of people lobbying for Greater Manchester to leave the UK said your legal
status would not be affected by a leave vote

8/ leading leave campaigners blamed you for contributing to
the lowering of local wages, taking up school places and jobs for Mancunians

9/ Greater Manchester voted to leave the UK

10/ the Mayor of Greater Manchester immediately resigned and
a new mayor was appointed (sorry @andyburnhamgm – this is a thought experiment
so is not directed at you personally!)

11/ the new Mayor had a history of creating a hostile environment
for anyone not from Greater Manchester

12/ the new Mayor refused to guarantee your legal status in
Greater Manchester and described you as a “bargaining chip” and “citizen of
nowhere”

13/ the new Mayor notified the UK that Greater Manchester
was leaving the UK in two years’ time

14/ the new Mayor continued to decline to guarantee your
legal status in the UK but you continued with your job.

15/ the new Mayor devised a new scheme called “settled
status” whereby you could pay a fee to secure a legal status that granted you
less rights than previously

16/ the new Mayor promised that it would be easy to get
settled status and Greater Manchester would only check if you were a criminal
or a security threat in determining whether to grant you that status

17/ the new Mayor with little public fanfare then decided to
change the rules so that it could deport anyone who did not exercise the rights
available to them to secure their status

18/ you were too scared to apply to secure your status
because the Major’s Office had had an earlier scandal where it wrongly deported
people from the Isle of Wight who had come to Greater Manchester to help
rebuild it after World War 2

19/ Greater Manchester looked like it could not agree a deal
with the UK as to the terms of its departure and published 106 notices setting
out what happens in a range of situations

20/ Greater Manchester did not publish anything about the
status of people from the UK if there is no deal nor did it make any binding guarantees as to your status

21/ a minister in the office of the Mayor then said that employers would have to
check your right to work in Manchester Royal Infirmary but the Mayor’s office
was refusing to guarantee your legal status that underpinned your right to work
in the hospital

22/ your Mancunian partner had a brother or sister working in a car production site
in Sunderland whose status was also unclear and the response of the Mayor of
Greater Manchester was to ignore requests for a meeting or for helping secure
his/her legal status in Sunderland

23/ How would you feel?