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Brexit Means...

Britain's Rights Offer to EU Citizens Is a Huge Step Back for Freedom

The government has branded it "generous", but it really isn't.
(Collage by Martha Parszeniew)

To prove that she hasn't learned a lesson after an election spent unnecessarily hitching her reputation to a meaningless couplet, Theresa May has repeatedly called her offer to EU citizens living in Briton – published on Monday – "fair and serious". It begs the question: what would an "unserious" government white paper look like? A document headed with the Royal coat of arms full of knob gags followed by, "but seriously…"?

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Her insistence on its fairness and seriousness hasn't convinced those who have read it. The President of the EU Council said it was "below expectations"; groups representing the interests of EU27 citizens in the UK said they were "bitterly disappointed" by its vagueness; and the Prime Minister – I mean, leader of the opposition – Jeremy Corbyn called it "too little, too late".

Reading the white paper, you can see why: although there are a few concessions to the EU – which the government has re-branded "generosity" – it doesn't provide the feeling of certainty to EU migrants who haven't been able to plan their futures for the past year. The EU published its own lucid, brief position paper on citizens' rights on the 12th of June, which guaranteed British immigrants the ability to continue enjoying all the rights they currently do and committed to maintaining their freedom of movement within the EU27. The consensus is that Britain's offer is nowhere near as generous.

According to the white paper, the 3 million Europeans living in Britain will be able to apply for "settled status" if they have had five years continuous residence, in relation to a yet-to-be-confirmed cut-off date. EU citizens arriving after this date should "have no expectation of guaranteed settled status". Those who successfully qualify for settled status will get a lovely new ID card.

Although the bureaucratic process to apply will apparently be "streamlined" and easier than the current permanent residency application, it means the 150,000 Europeans who planned ahead and filled out the old, complex application form after the Brexit referendum will be forced to do a new one.

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In the government's most significant concession to the EU, those applying for settled status who are "economically inactive" – e.g. housewives, who apparently don't contribute to the economy – won't have to provide evidence that they have private health insurance as they did before.

The stingy family reunion rights offer could led to European families with members in different countries being split up. Yvette Cooper asked in the House of Commons, "If there are French parents whose 19-year-old daughter is studying in Paris and they have been living here for more than five years, will that daughter be able to return to live with them here without them having to pass the income threshold?" Although Theresa May implied that the daughter wouldn't – "no new rules will apply" – Cooper later tweeted an excerpt from the white paper that suggests the young graduate would, in fact, have to prove she earned a certain amount of money to be reunited with her parents in the UK.

This represents an improvement from the days of "Pret-A-Manger Visas" – when the government toyed with the idea of pegging working-class Europeans' ability to stay in the UK to their employers – but there are still some major losses in terms of rights. The new settled EU nationals won't be able to bring spouses into the country without meeting the minimum income threshold of £18,600 that currently holds for non-EEA spouses. They also won't able to easily bring family members into the country after the cut-off date, unlike Britons living in the EU.

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The EU is not a utopia: its treatment of refugees and migrants coming from outside its borders is nothing short of murderous; and its commitment to an economic system that produces the internal displacement of workers is one reason so many on the left, like Corbyn, have been critical of it.

However, its limited notion of freedom of movement for European citizens contains within it the promise of a freer world. Ideally, this right would be extended to everyone, whether their passports are adorned with Union Flags, European gold stars – or if they don't have passports at all.

This rights offer is a step back. Looming large is a question of how an underfunded civil service will cope with processing 3 million applications over two years. But mostly, the government's proposals for EU citizens living in the UK told us what many already knew: Britain under Theresa May is committed to rejecting the cosmopolitanism implied by freedom of movement.

@YohannK