As a Dutch person, there is one particular issue about the UK that has had me puzzled for years: Why on earth does the UK, a country that is so obsessed with immigration, not have a national registration system for its citizens?
When our children were younger, my husband and I used to have au pairs living with us at our flat in London. Most of those au pairs were Dutch, and as soon as they arrived, they would usually ask us where they were supposed to register their arrival. “You are not required to get registered anywhere”, I used to reply. “So how will the authorities know where I am?”, they asked. “Well, don’t take it personally, but they’re really not interested! If you were to stay here, and get a proper job at some point in the future, you would need to get a National Insurance number and register with HMRC to pay your taxes. But right now, you don’t have to go to town hall and tell someone where you live, like you do at home. I have been here since 17th September 1990, but that arrival date isn’t registered anywhere in the UK.“
The reason why all of us cloggies were so surprised was because we were used to doing things very differently at home. In The Netherlands, there is one big citizen’s database, which covers the entire population of about 17 million people. No real distinction is being made between people who were born in Holland, or those who moved there later: everyone is required to be registered at their home address. When you move house, even if it’s just down the road, you must inform the authorities.
Everybody also has their own Burger Service Nummer, or BSN (citizen’s service number). You need this for everything to do with your administration, and you will get asked for it on a regular basis. You want to open a bank account, or get health insurance? Not without your BSN. Receive your salary? Apply for benefits? Make a hospital appointment? You and your BSN are inextricably linked.
In contrast, the British system has never been as rigorous. There are some registration structures in place, of course, like the electoral roll, HMRC, or GP patient lists, but there is no Dutch-style umbrella government database that covers everything and everybody comprehensively. Do you remember Grenfell Tower? Nobody knew exactly how many people lived there when the fire broke out. In fact, ten people managed to convince the authorities that they were Grenfell residents when they weren’t, and received financial assistance that they were not entitled to, because there was no registration system.
So yes, the Dutch way of doing things may be a bit much for anyone who is concerned about privacy and personal liberties. And to be fair, it is a bit like a mix of George Orwell’s 1984 and the 1960’s tv series The Prisoner: Big Brother is watching you, and you are most definitely a number. But at least the authorities know who lives where, how long they’ve been there, and who is entitled to healthcare coverage or unemployment benefits.
Is it the EU’s fault that the UK doesn’t have a citizen’s registration system? Of course not. The UK is a sovereign country, that has made its own decisions. Do other EU countries have it? Yes, many of them do. The UK has just chosen not to.
So if there is no real system that tells you who has moved in and out of the country, how does the UK actually measure immigration? Well, you know those nice ladies who sometimes jump in front of you at airports, wanting to ask you a few questions? Believe it or not, but the UK’s immigration count is for about 90% based on those questions, that culminate in the so-called International Passenger Survey (IPS). The IPS operates at 19 airports, 8 ports and the Channel Tunnel rail link, and a sample of passengers get asked where they’re from, why they’re in the UK and how long they are planning to stay. That data is then combined with numbers from the Home Office, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA), and the UK census (which is carried out every 10 years). Based on all of that, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) publishes a migration update every three months.
As you can imagine, those final figures are more an educated guess than an exact science, but there are a few things that we can deduct from them. One of them is that immigration from non-EU countries, which has nothing to do with Brexit for obvious reasons, has been consistently higher than EU immigration for decades: at the moment, net figures hover around 261,000 a year. And the UK has always had full control over immigration from non-EU countries, of course.
Talking about non-EU countries, whatever happened to Turkey? During the referendum, big Vote Leave posters shown all over the country informed us that “Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU”. Surely that must be imminent by now?
No, it isn’t, because it wasn’t true. Turkey applied to join as far back as 1987 (32 years ago), and in all that time has only managed to get through 1 out of the 35 chapters that it needs to complete in order to join. Negotiations have completely stalled in recent years due to Turkey’s human rights violations, so it really doesn’t look like the country will be eligible anytime soon. And even if Turkey ever does manage to complete the other 34 chapters through some kind of miracle, then every single EU country, including the UK, can use its veto to block accession. So let’s not mince words: the language on the poster was a blatant lie.
Surely the Leave campaign must have known this? So why did it choose to mislead the public like that? Well, it’s probably for the same reason why Nigel Farage’s Ukip produced that famous Breaking Point poster: because the fear factor is such an effective and persuasive tool. Remember that this was 2016, when both Isis and president Assad were committing terrible atrocities in Syria, and the refugee crisis was in full flow. Against a background of tabloid newspapers that had been fanning the flames of fear for years, many people were terrified of the two particular bogeymen du jour: muslim terrorists and refugees. And seeing as a combination of both was clearly about to infiltrate the UK, Trojan Horse-style, we needed a heroic act like Brexit to stop that from happening.
Never mind that the Breaking Point poster showed people who had nothing to do with Brexit, because they were from outside the EU (there was a sea of brown faces, when there is no EU country where most people have brown skin – was this a bit of a dog whistle to racists?). The people in the poster were obviously supposed to be Syrian refugees, and the implication was that the UK would be forced to take in scores of them by the EU. Never mind that the UK only engages selectively with EU rules on asylum and immigration, and is not even part of the second phase of the EU’s Common Asylum Policy. Never mind that even if someone is eventually granted refugee status in another EU country (a painstakingly long process) it takes years to get an EU passport so he or she can travel abroad – 7 years in Germany, for instance. Never mind that the UK isn’t part of the Schengen zone and has full control over its borders (apart from illegal immigration, but that’s already illegal, of course). And never mind the fact that there are about 1.8 billion muslims in the world, and none of us would be here if just one percent of them wanted to blow people up – so let’s keep a little perspective.
Never mind any of that: the simple Leave campaign messages about immigrants resonated with people, even when they made no sense at all, and even if immigration from EU and non-EU countries got completely mixed up in public discussions. Facts didn’t matter; feelings did. It was in this toxic climate of hatred and resentment towards foreigners that pro-migrant MP Jo Cox was murdered by far-right terrorist Thomas Mair, just hours after the Breaking Point poster was revealed.
So let’s now talk about the only type of migration that is relevant in the context of Brexit: migration from EU countries. Net migration from EU countries was around 57,000 in the year up to September 2018 – the lowest it has been in years, and down from 189,000 in the year before the referendum. How much control does the UK have over EU citizens coming into the UK, if any? To answer this question, we must again make a distinction between the free movement of people within the Schengen zone, and freedom of movement as part of the Single Market.
Last time, we found out that the UK and the Republic of Ireland have an opt-out from the Schengen zone, that there is a physical border, and that everybody coming into the UK or Ireland still has to go through passport control. The Schengen zone is therefore pretty much irrelevant in the UK’s Brexit debate, because the UK is not part of it.
What does matter, however, is the famous ‘freedom of movement’ principle. That does apply to the UK, because it is in the Single Market – and in order to enjoy the advantages of the Single Market countries have to adhere to the Four Freedoms:
- Freedom of goods
- Freedom of services
- Freedom of capital
- Freedom of movement.
It is this freedom of movement principle that became a big issue during the Brexit debate. For many people who voted for Brexit, it was a no-brainer: we can’t just let anybody come into the UK; there should be some kind of limit to it. Particularly when it comes to people from poorer EU countries, with lower wages and lower living standards, who may be entitled to claim benefits in the much richer UK. “Surely we are not being unreasonable if we don’t want to ‘sponsor’ EU immigrants who are going to sit on their backside and sponge off the state, while the rest of us have to work hard every day and pay our taxes?”, they reasoned. Sounds fair enough, right?
Actually, even though there is a perception in the UK that the EU has some kind of open door policy, freedom of movement is not an unconditional right at all. Article 7 of the EU Citizen’s Rights Directive states that after three months, if you’re an EU citizen who moves to another EU country, you must:
- have a job or be self-employed, earning money and paying taxes (in other words: you are economically active); or
- have ‘sufficient resources’ in order not to become a ‘burden on the social assistance system of the host country’, and have comprehensive sickness insurance (in other words: you are financially independent).
That’s it. Either you work (or you’re in education), or you’re so rich already that you don’t need to work. In addition to that, immigrants can also be sent back for reasons like public policy, public security and public health, and David Cameron’s February 2016 EU deal gave the UK stronger powers to deport EU criminals.
This is where the UK’s, shall we say, rather lax administration system comes in. Because how can you send people back, if you don’t know who has come in, and where they live? EU citizens who moved to the UK have never been obliged to register at their local municipality, and once they arrive in the country, the authorities don’t really keep tabs on most of them. As long as they keep a low profile, it is pretty easy to get lost in a big city like London.
Sensible restrictions on the freedom of movement principle have always been available under EU law, but successive UK governments have never bothered enforcing them. They have never insisted that EU immigrants had to have a job, or be wealthy enough to support themselves. They have never demanded that they have comprehensive sickness insurance. And they never deported anyone who wasn’t economically active or financially independent after 3 months – possibly because they wouldn’t know how or where to find them!
It’s a similar story regarding the so-called A8 countries: 8 Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004. It would have been perfectly possible for the UK to impose temporary labour market restrictions on workers from these countries under EU law. However, the UK, Ireland and Sweden decided not to. This meant that there was a sudden surge of Eastern European immigrants, who often settled in rural areas in which immigration was uncommon.
My mum and dad always used to say: “Everything that has too in front of it is not good: too much, too little, too excessive etc.” Everything in moderation, in other words. The arrival of large numbers of migrants 10-15 years ago (too many, too sudden, some would argue) did put an extra strain on schools, housing and GP surgeries in certain parts of the country. This often happened in areas that successive governments had already underinvested in for years. But is worth remembering that the vast majority of those migrants are law-abiding citizens who work, pay their taxes and therefore pay their own way (and the ones who don’t shouldn’t have been allowed to stay after 3 months according to EU rules, remember?). What would really help poorer areas in the UK is not so much getting rid of the foreigners (or the EU, which has invested very heavily in those areas), but some proper government funding for local services, particularly in those areas that have been left behind for decades.
Another common argument is that some (mainly Eastern European) communities should integrate a bit better into British society. That may be true to a degree, but it is a lot harder to integrate when you’re constantly being met with hostility, the locals don’t talk to you and you don’t feel welcome. And isn’t it funny how some of the same people who have a problem with Polish shops love going to the Dog & Duck and that little expat shop that sells hobnobs when they are in Benidorm?
Listen to what Conservative Lord Michael Heseltine has to say about immigration and freedom of movement, and about someone who was Home Secretary for 6 years between 2010-2016. Someone whose name will always be associated with Brexit, but also with expressions like ‘hostile environment’, ‘queue jumpers’, ‘Windrush scandal’, ‘go home vans’ and ’citizens of nowhere’: Theresa May.
“The interesting thing in the European context is that now the overseas immigration from outside Europe is in a different league or scale to those from Europe. And that was the case whilst Theresa May was home secretary for all those years. Why did she do nothing about it, if this was the burning issue? And the reason why I think she didn’t do anything is because our social services depend upon the skills of the doctors and the nurses in the health service that have come from outside that actually make immigration a very important strength to our economy. And the government didn’t want to be put in a position where it is obviously controlling these numbers, creating shortages, lengthening the queues, in a way that would have happened if immigration had been controlled in the way they wanted it to be.”
Lord Heseltine is absolutely right: immigrants are indeed a ‘very important strength to our economy’, particularly to the NHS. The UK is lucky enough to have an extremely low unemployment rate, which together with an ageing population means that there are shortages in certain sectors of the economy that immigrants – both skilled and unskilled – help fill. 9.5% of doctors are EU nationals, for instance (23% of doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital even), as well as 16% of dentists and 6.4% of nurses and midwives. From care workers to seasonal farm labourers, teachers to abattoir vets, surgeons to chambermaids, EU citizens have been a vital part of the UK economy for years.
And not only do most of those EU immigrants work (83% of those of working age, compared to 76% of UK nationals), there is overwhelming evidence that they actually boost public finances rather than costing the UK money. That is because they contribute more in taxes, and make much less use of benefits and public services than the average British person. And yes, this includes people from those so-called A8 countries I mentioned earlier. Immigrants from these countries often do low-paid work that local British people don’t want to do, such as fruit picking, factory work or cleaning. But their high employment rates and hard work offset the fact that they usually get paid less than either UK citizens or immigrants from the older EU countries, meaning that they still contribute more than they take out.
A major study on the impact of 20 years of immigration (up to 2015) by the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance concluded that “EU immigrants pay more in taxes than they use public services, and therefore help to reduce the budget deficit. Immigrants do not have a negative effect on local services such as education, health or social housing.” The report found that rather than being the fault of immigrants, these problems were the result of the 2008 cash and the slow economic recovery. Another huge study found that European migrants made a positive net contribution of £22 billion to UK public finances between 2000-2011. A research paper published by University College London states that immigrants from the European Economic Area (EEA) paid 34% more in tax than they took out, whereas UK-born citizens paid for only 89% of the benefits and services they received through taxes, costing the state £624 billion between 2001 and 2011.
In other words: EU immigrants actually sponsor British society, not the other way round.
The reason for this is that they are much more likely to be of working age than the general population. Think about it: until we are, say, around 20 years old, we cost society money, in childcare and education costs. We then start working, hopefully for several decades, and instead of taking, we start contributing to the public coffers instead. Our income taxes pay for schools and hospitals, teachers’ salaries and the police. At the end of our lives, when we need more medical attention and draw our pensions, we become expensive again.
Likewise, your typical Polish builder arrives in the UK fully educated and immunised, so the expensive early part of his life has been paid for by his home country. He works and pays his taxes to his host country during the long productive years of his life, so the UK benefits from him and gets pretty good value for money. And quite often, he retires ‘back home’ before he needs a care home or a hip operation.
The UK needs immigrants to fill jobs. Some people seem to fantasise that British workers will replace them all after Brexit, but evidence suggests otherwise. Many EU citizens have already left the UK in recent years, and this has not lead to a sudden uptake of jobs by British workers, but to fruit rotting in the fields, and to 100,000 vacancies in the NHS. Some of those vacancies are having to be filled by temporary staff, which costs the NHS more money, and it is likely that EU workers will simply be replaced by non-EU workers. Will the NHS really be any better off when your doctor comes from Argentina instead of Spain, or from China instead of Malta?
So how do those 3.6 million EU citizens in the UK, and the 1.3 million British citizens in the EU-27 countries feel about Brexit? A total of nearly 5 million people, most of whom didn’t even get a vote over their own future during the referendum? Well, some of their testimonies have been documented in two poignant books called “In Limbo” and “In Limbo Too”. This is how one Italian lady in the UK expresses herself:
“One morning, after years and even decades, you suddenly feel unwelcome, unwanted, betrayed. Your certainties, your life and your security are gone. Through no fault of your own you are stuck in a painful limbo.” (Elena Remigi)
Sadly, it sums up how a lot of people feel. For years, many decent EU citizens have been portrayed as freeloaders and parasites by the Leave campaign and the British press, even when the opposite was true. Some have even been mixed up with terrorists or refugees in the public mind. Foreign simply equalled bad. It is one thing to be under appreciated, but it is quite another thing when your presence in the country is the second biggest reason why people all around you voted to leave the EU.
We are not just talking about anonymous immigrants here. These EU citizens are our neighbours, friends and colleagues, who have jobs, spouses, children and social lives in the UK. It’s the lady who looks after your parents in their care home, the guy who fixed your roof, your Amazon delivery driver. People who contribute to society, both in taxes and in services, and have often done so for many years. They exercised their right to move to another country in good faith, and have now found that the rules have suddenly changed. Some are not even sure if they will be entitled to Settled Status (a brand new registration system that only applies to EU citizens) because they may have taken a career break to look after children or a sick relative, and now the government suddenly and retroactively demands to see proof of comprehensive health insurance – something it never mentioned before.
And freedom of movement works both ways, of course: Brexit also takes away the rights of British citizens themselves to live, work, study or retire in any of the other 27 EU countries. Something that a lot of voters, particularly older people, may not have taken into consideration in 2016. It means that their own children and grandchildren will now be denied the chance to enjoy any of the benefits of the freedom of movement that they themselves had access to, like living in Prague for a year, or studying in Sweden under the EU’s Erasmus programme. The British people essentially voted to lose their own rights in this respect, because they will be stripped of their EU citizenship.
For years, successive governments have only been too happy to join in the populist blame game against immigrants. Nobody has been brave enough to go against the grain and articulate the benefits of immigration and the work that EU citizens do, or the advantages of free movement for UK citizens. Perhaps it suited them when the victims of austerity and government policies blamed the foreigners lower down the social ladder for their plight, rather than the politicians making the decisions higher up the ladder. Is it any wonder that in this hostile environment, there has been a rise in hate crimes against EU citizens, and against all immigrants in general?
In a sensible Brexit deal, there will be some kind of safety net, and the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU-27 countries will most likely be protected. But the UK has deliberately left the option of a No Deal on the table during the past few years, meaning that those rights are in no way guaranteed. This is what has led to 3 years of uncertainty and anxiety. Not only do 5 million people still not know exactly what their residency rights will be after Brexit (and thankfully, most EU countries have been very generous in this respect), they also don’t know if they will be able to keep any of the associated rights regarding employment, frontier work, education, health and social care, pensions and voting rights. 5 million human beings without a voice or vote, who didn’t deserve to be used as bargaining chips in some cynical political game. But sadly, that is exactly what has happened to them.
Next time, let’s examine the number one reason why people voted for Brexit: sovereignty.
Johanna Brunt was born and raised in The Netherlands. She has spent half her life there on the continent, and half her life in the UK. After studying English and European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, she moved to London where she started working for an international airline. She is married to a Brit, and they have three children together.
