Defend Freedom of Movement Against Draconian UK Brexit Plan for ‘National Preference’.

British Government Plans to Introduce ‘National Preference’ in Jobs Market.

Leaked document reveals UK Brexit plan to deter EU immigrants reports the Guardian.

Exclusive: Home Office paper sets out detailed proposals including measures to drive down number of low-skilled migrants from Europe

It proposes measures to drive down the number of lower-skilled EU migrants – offering them residency for a maximum of only two years, in a document likely to cheer hardliners in the Tory party. Those in “high-skilled occupations” will be granted permits to work for a longer period of three to five years.

The document also describes a phased introduction to a new immigration system that ends the right to settle in Britain for most European migrants – and places tough new restrictions on their rights to bring in family members. Potentially, this could lead to thousands of families being split up.

Showing a passport will be mandatory for all EU nationals wanting to enter Britain – and the paper proposes introducing a system of temporary biometric residence permits for all EU nationals coming into the UK after Brexit for more than a few months.

The determination to end free movement from day one and drive down lower-skilled EU migration, end the role of the European court of justice in family migration and extend elements of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” measures to long-term EU migrants without residence permits is likely to please hard Brexiters.

The paper updates with this comment,

Analysing the document, Alan Travis, our home affairs editor, said:

It proposes that after Brexit day all newly arrived EU migrants, unless they are highly skilled, will lose their rights to live permanently in Britain. At a stroke they will be turned into temporary workers with a maximum two-year permit.

The Independent,

Brexit: Tory government EU migration plans labelled ‘economically illiterate’ and ‘plainly cruel’ amid angry backlash

Ministers accused of planning ‘cruel’ restrictions which would damage the economy, split up families – and allow rogue bosses to exploit workers

Draconian post-Brexit curbs on immigration revealed in leaked Government proposals would wreck public services and fuel an “underground economy”, Theresa May has been told.

The plans – which would strip all newly-arrived EU migrants of their rights to live permanently in Britain, including the highly-skilled – triggered a furious backlash within hours.

Ministers were accused of planning “cruel” restrictions which would not only damage the British economy and the NHS, but allow rogue bosses to exploit migrants and undercut good employers.

Those who follow French politics will recognise that in the scheme is a policy of National Preference, close to the demand of the far-right Front National, for jobs to go to first of all to UK Nationals.

 

Criticism of the ideas is pouring in:  4 things wrong with the goverment’s Brexit immigration plans  COLIN YEO

It is to be hope that the majority of the left will respond to these plans along the lines advanced by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement.

Ana Oppenheim, a spokesperson for the Labour Campaign for Free Movement and an international students’ representative for the National Union of Students, said: “Our party should stand for a system of free movement. This is in the interests of all workers, by giving everyone the right to work legally, join a union and stand up to their boss without fear of deportation or destitution. Migrants’ rights are workers’ rights.”

The Labour Campaign for Free Movement was launched on 4 August by trade unionists and Labour Party members and supporters. Prominent signatories to its founding statement include MPs Clive Lewis, David Lammy, Geraint Davies and Tulip Siddiq, and the General Secretaries of the TSSA, BFAWU, UCU and UVW trade unions. Over 2,300 Labour members and supporters are already backing the campaign, which intends to bring proposals for free movement policy to next month’s Labour Party Conference.

Sign up for this if you're as outraged as me about the home office migration doc leaked today https://t.co/MQwyqt6Ieu

— Sabrina Huck (@Sabrina_Huck) September 5, 2017

With these measures on the cards those on the left who voted Leave, and who claimed that the vote paved the way for a ‘socialist’ Brexit are in disarray.

How they ever imagined that a  few street protests would change the Cabinet’s course is hard to explain, even for those accustomed to the mythomania of some on the left.

A specific dilemma is faced by those within the labour movement and Labour Party who are hostile to freedom of movement.

The small ‘Trotskyist’ Socialist Party is representative of this current.

The organised workers’ movement must take an independent class position on the EU free movement of labour rules that will be raised in the EU negotiations.

The SP has written this,  “The single market and free movement”

The socialist and trade union movement from its earliest days has never supported the ‘free movement of goods, services and capital’ – or labour – as a point of principle but instead has always striven for the greatest possible degree of workers’ control, the highest form of which, of course, would be a democratic socialist society with a planned economy. It is why, for example, the unions have historically fought for the closed shop, whereby only union members can be employed in a particular workplace, a very concrete form of ‘border control’ not supported by the capitalists.

It will be interesting to see what kind of ‘closed shop’ they and others of this opinion would offer as an alternative – if any –  to the latest Tory plans.