Will a Brexit leave millions of migrants behind?
By Toby Melville
By Toby Melville
As Britain prepares for a referendum on its membership in
the European Union scheduled for June 23, Fresta is one of about 3 million EU
migrants living in the U.K. At present, the EU’s freedom of movement rules
ensure his right to remain in the U.K., as well as his right to a student loan
to pay tuition fees. But nobody is entirely sure what will happen to him if
Britain votes to leave. Unable to vote in the poll—Parliament in 2015 decided
to restrict that right to British citizens, U.K. residents from the
Commonwealth and a select few other nationalities—he can only watch as the people
whose country he shares make the decision for him.
Even if Britain opts out, it’s possible that not much will
change for people like Fresta. But whatever happens, the referendum could do
lasting damage to Britain’s reputation across Europe as an open, tolerant
place. “At the moment, what you see in Italian newspapers is ‘Britain is hoping
to get the Italians out of the country,’” says Fresta.
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If Britain votes to leave the EU, Prime Minister David
Cameron has said he will immediately trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of
Lisbon, which formally announces a member state’s desire to depart and begins a
two-year negotiation process on its future dealings with the bloc. Some who
favor pulling out say Cameron might not need to use this mechanism right away,
but regardless, if Britain leaves, it will look to reshape its trade agreements
with the EU.
There the certainty ends. Britain’s future depends on what
those in power at the time want and can get in negotiations. At present, the
U.K. has full access to the so-called EU “single market,” an area comprising 28
member states and some others that is treated for trade purposes as one
territory. Does Britain want to keep that access? If not, who will it trade
with and on what terms? There are myriad possible permutations. The complete
lack of certainty—on just about any significant point—means that the shape of
U.K. immigration policy and the fate of people like Fresta hang in the balance.
It is unlikely, under most scenarios, that the majority of
EU migrants living and working in Britain would have to immediately pack their
bags and leave. Steve Peers, professor of law at the University of Essex, says
there is “a general international law principle” that rights granted to those
migrants who have already moved ought to be protected. In any case, he adds,
the British government would want to secure a decent deal for its approximately
4 million citizens living in the EU. But the details of what would be protected
in such an arrangement are uncertain.
One question mark is whether EU citizens who arrived less
than five years ago would be as secure as their more established countrymen.
After five years in the U.K., EU migrants can apply for a right to “permanent
residence,” a concept in EU law, and they may also qualify for “indefinite
leave to remain,” which is enshrined in U.K. law. Those who have secured the
latter, which is trickier and more expensive to obtain, would be unaffected by
a British exit, says Charlotte O’Brien, a senior lecturer at York Law School,
because they are protected under British law. Those with the former, says
Peers, could well be covered by a U.K.-EU deal.
But what about those who haven’t been in the country that
long? “The position of [those in the U.K. for] less than five years is weaker,
and [they] might not be fully covered, or you might be frozen in your current
situation,” says Peers. Fresta, who has been in the U.K. for only three years,
says he knows many EU nationals in Britain who might not otherwise have come
there if they had known about the referendum. He also is worried about his
Italian girlfriend. She lives with him in Britain, but if the U.K. leaves and
it means her teenage sister can’t join her when she grows up, Fresta’s
girlfriend may move to a country where she can be with her sibling.
Then there’s the issue of access to health care and welfare
benefits. “I think EU nationals would be quite right to be concerned,” O’Brien
says, “about their right to equal treatment.” She gives the example of
Switzerland, where access to social assistance benefits—which in the U.K.
includes top-ups on rent and possibly the government’s forthcoming scheme to
simplify welfare by rolling several different benefits into one—are limited for
EU nationals, and these people are also required by law to get private health
care.
There are also questions regarding the treatment of EU
migrants’ children. If Britain leaves, could those children expect to be
treated the same as their parents, who under freedom of movement rules have
enjoyed the right to work, study and claim some benefits, similar (albeit
reduced) to those British citizens hold? Could those born before the referendum
expect to keep all their entitlements when they turn 18? Unlike in the U.S.,
not everyone born in the U.K. is a British citizen. “You could be in a
situation,” says O’Brien, “18 years down the line, where you still had those
rights that had been negotiated as part of a transition but that your child
turned 18 and suddenly lost those rights.” For example, access to a
government-backed loan to pay university course fees for children of EU
migrants could be in doubt, says Peers.
Justyna Makowska, 31, who arrived in the U.K. from Poland in
2010 and works in a supermarket, has two young children. She supports Cameron’s
drive to make it harder for EU citizens to claim benefits in Britain.” My mum
always worked,” she says. “No one is just going to give you money just like
that.” She raises her children to have the same attitude. “We’re not living in
paradise, where money comes [out] of [the] sky.” But far in the future as it
may be, she likes the idea of them going to university in Britain too: “I want
them to have [an] education, and I want them to work,” she says. If they did
lose access to tuition fees, “it would definitely make a difference.”
Two of Britain’s major campaigns for a “leave” vote in the
referendum, Leave.EU and Vote Leave, are dismissive of questions about the
rights of EU migrants. “Nothing would change,” Robert Oxley, a spokesman for
Vote Leave, tells Newsweek. But neither group will be at the negotiating table
in the event of an exit, and both have an interest in playing down the risks of
departure. The government is not forthcoming on the issue. Britain’s Home
Office declined Newsweek’s request for an interview with Immigration Minister
James Brokenshire.
In the absence of firm answers, many EU citizens are
watching the debate with a sense of unease and powerlessness. Paul Varga, an
Austrian who came to Britain in 2012 and now runs Playbrush, a tech startup
based in London that employs 10 people, is frustrated that he won’t be able to
have a say: “I can vote for the London mayor, so why can’t I vote for this question,
which really affects me personally, and my business, and my British employees?”
he asks.
Part of the great European dream was to create a society
where one’s birth country mattered less than the place one chose to make a
life. As the novelist Umberto Eco put it in a 2011 paean to the Erasmus
University exchange program, “I call it a sexual revolution: A young Catalan
man meets a Flemish girl. They fall in love, they get married, and they become
European, as do their children.” By drawing attention to differences that
didn’t merit such notice before, the EU referendum might be driving a wedge
between Britain’s native-born population and their EU national neighbors that a
“remain” vote won’t necessarily remove.
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