Nine months on from the referendum and much ink has been spilled over the future plight of EU migrants. The government refuses to guarantee their rights until it has reciprocal reassurances from other EU countries. This argument does not bear the slightest scrutiny. To all intents and purposes, the government’s hands are tied, and it will have no choice but to guarantee EU residents’ future status soon. The PM should get on and do it, and grant them Deemed Leave on the day Article 50 is triggered.
The government has no choice but to guarantee EU residents’ rights for three reasons. Firstly, while we have a rough estimate that there are 3m EU nationals in Britain, we don’t know where they are. Free movement means exactly that, with no obligation to register with the Home Office or mark yourself out as an EU national. If the government were to make good on its implicit threat that EU nationals’ rights are no longer valid, it would presumably look to put that into action somehow and curtail these residents’ rights. Yet there is currently no way to establish who or where those people are.
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