,
11 tweets,
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1. Home Office is pressing ahead with plans to close bank accounts of those it believes have no right of residence theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/s…
2. The hostile environment wrong in principle. Forces private landlords, employers to conduct profoundly un-British “papers, please” checks.
3. This encourages discrimination. Ethnic minority, foreign born and those with foreign sounding names more likely to be asked for papers.
4. Also terrible in practice because based on poor quality Home Office records with high error rate, c.10% freemovement.org.uk/inspection-rep… 
5. Difficulty opening bank accounts and accessing services already bad enough
6. Difficulty opening bank acc bad enough. Imagine bank acc shut down - no money, no food, lose home, lose job. Got a family? Tough.
7. Bank can’t help you - have to contact Home Office and correct their records. How would you even start? Good luck with that.
8. Already happens with driving licences causing 000s of innocent people to commit strict liability criminal offence freemovement.org.uk/inspection-rep…
9. Non EU migrants have had to live with this for years. EU migrants are about to be exposed to it as well. /END
Afterthought: see the primary legislation for yourself here: legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/19/…
And here’s a bit more background I wrote earlier on other aspects of a Theresa May’s hostile environment freemovement.org.uk/hostile-enviro…
