[man-and-laptop]

Opinion on Brexit. Hopefully of interest:

I'm torn on Brexit.

If Britain stays in the European Union, then it won't have a lot of power to manage her borders. The "liberalness" of Britain's immigration policy ends up being at minimum the liberalness of each of the other 27 EU countries. Germany could let in 1 million immigrants (good for them), all of them would get citizenship, all of them can go to the UK, the UK can't say to any of them "Hold on a minute. Are you even a fit?"

Also, this kind of unrestricted immigration is a historical anomaly. 100s of years ago, it took too long to travel from one place to another, and so people who lived far away were more different to each other. It's not clear whether throwing all the borders open will result in something stable that will last for centuries.

It's also a colossal experiment. If the experiment doesn't work out (see the above paragraph) then 28 countries pay the price. The UK will be deeply affected because it's an immigrant magnet, due to its high living standards, a lot of employment opportunities, and a widely spoken national language; something might happen to Romania and Poland, given that much of their population has apparently emigrated. If the experiment turns out bad, then multiply the impact by 28 for each of the 28 countries.

And there was a recent article on HN about an EU law that says newspaper headlines are going under copyright. Again, mistakes like this affect 500 million people (the citizens of the EU) and 28 different countries. This is a monoculture, which is bad in nature; why not in politics? The Ottoman monoculture might have been one of the things that set the Middle East / North Africa back. For instance, the Ottomans banned printing (in Arabic). How would that have been good for science? And China's another famous empire/union (monoculture), in which one emperor dissolved their fleet, which was the most advanced at the time, impacting their trade, and preventing them from settling elsewhere. How is a European, or even a globalised monoculture, any better?

On the other hand, I can see how the immediate economic impacts of Brexit might be bad.

[zero_iq]

You are talking nonsense.

The UK has (and always has had) complete exemption from EU common immigration policy. The EU is not able to dictate immigration controls to the UK. If you have a problem with how the UK handles non-EU immigration then it is the fault of UK government policy, not the EU.

The complete exception from common immigration policy of the UK (along with Ireland and in some matters Denmark) is laid out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2009).

EDIT: to clarify -- I am referring to non-EU immigration here, not freedom-of-movement for EU citizens.

[man-and-laptop]

Really? Because "freedom of movement" seems to be the sticking point in the Brexit negotiations. The UK can't go the Norway route because it doesn't want "free movement" into its territory.

[zero_iq]

I'm referring to common immigration policy, i.e. from outside the EU into the EU. This is distinct from freedom-of-movement for EU citizens within the EU. Such freedom-of-movement does not apply to non-EU citizens.

[man-and-laptop]

A person from country C can immigrate into the UK by immigrating into one of 27 different other countries, and then using free movement to get into the UK. This makes border control harder.

[zero_iq]

Indeed. But to become an EU citizen you have to meet the citizenship requirements, the common standard for which the UK has previously negotiated and agreed along with the other members, PLUS additional requirements and limitations can be imposed by the UK for other kinds of long term residential statuses. It's not like one member state is allowed really lax citizenship laws, so people can choose to sneak in through there, and restrictions can be imposed even by the UK for a limited period.

The UK manages to both have influence over EU immigration policies AND also have exemption to it for non-EU immigration, AND can apply its own limitations even for when immigrants get citizenship for a limited period. Yet many brexiters spout on about how the EU just dictates everything to us and it's all out of our control. Absolute rubbish.

[tpm]

It can get into 27 countries depending on their terms for immigration, but then cannot simply use free movement to move to the UK. This is incorrect. As a non-EU national, your rights in this regard are severely restricted. After five years in the EU, with a means of support, you are entitled to move freely within EU with the exception of some countries, notably the UK. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U...

[jcranmer]

> If Britain stays in the European Union, then it won't have a lot of power to manage her borders. The "liberalness" of Britain's immigration policy ends up being at minimum the liberalness of each of the other 27 EU countries. Germany could let in 1 million immigrants (good for them), all of them would get citizenship, all of them can go to the UK, the UK can't say to any of them "Hold on a minute. Are you even a fit?"

That's patently false. The EU doesn't prohibit (justified) immigration restrictions, and that sort of immigrant wave would be grounds for imposing restrictions.

[man-and-laptop]

It does prohibit them among the 28 member countries. They call it free movement. Each of those country's immigration policies is a loophole for the other 27. It's a loss of border sovereignty.

[jcranmer]

You are aware that the enlargement of the EU allowed existing countries to restrict migration from new countries, and that the UK government explicitly decided not to?

You are also aware that the EU specifically allows to limit the freedom of movement on "grounds of public policy, public security or public health"?

You are also aware that the recent migrant crisis of the past few years has caused these kinds of barriers to be raised in response? Proving that such restrictions are not just mere hypotheticals?

The European Union is, after all, not a suicide compact.

[man-and-laptop]

I'm talking about long term impact, not emergency measures. Everything you've mentioned is an emergency measure AFAICT.

For comparison, the impact of banning the printing presses only materialised quite a lot later than it happened. Remember that Europe used to be a lot of independent (and feuding) nations, rather than a union of any sort. There were unions of sorts under the Catholic and Orthodox churches, but England for instance was not part of those unions. it was in those times that Europe went through the scientific and industrial revolutions, while the empires I mentioned slowly stagnated.

[SirHound]

No, you are arguing in bad faith (or ignorance).

British immigration policy is British immigration policy because as per European law it has mechanisms to prevent benefit immigration that is isn’t exercising

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...

The fact is successive governments have rightly identified that both skilled and cheap labour from immigration is keeping our economy afloat. Otherwise we’d see them at least tap the brakes. But they haven’t.

[man-and-laptop]

> The fact is successive governments have rightly identified that both skilled and cheap labour from immigration is keeping our economy afloat. Otherwise we’d see them at least tap the brakes. But they haven’t.

OK, so a politician living a comfortable life thinks one thing. Individual voters thought something else.

I believe the document above refers to emergency powers to stop immigration control under limited conditions. It doesn't solve any long-term impacts that an experiment like "free movement" between 28 countries can have.

[edit]

I can see why certain things are more nuanced. Somebody mentioned that immigration from outside the EU into the EU, and then into the UK, has certain restrictions. These exemptions seem to be in place for the UK and Ireland and some other countries.

By TPM:

> It can get into 27 countries depending on their terms for immigration, but then cannot simply use free movement to move to the UK. This is incorrect. As a non-EU national, your rights in this regard are severely restricted. After five years in the EU, with a means of support, you are entitled to move freely within EU with the exception of some countries, notably the UK. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U....

[edit 20:40]

My comment wasn't just its first paragraph though. There's the problem that monocultures (like in crop species) might be better in the short-term, but can create long-term risk (combine your strengths together on the one hand, but make the same mistakes and have all the same weaknesses). I gave the copyright example. It's a lot easier for the copyright lobby to take over one entity, the EU, than over 28 countries each with disconnected regulatory systems. Even regulatory treaties don't result in monoculture, because somebody can leave a treaty much more easily than they can leave a superstate like the EU.

[makomk]

The EU Commission's position, if I remember correctly, is that all those mechanisms cease to apply as soon as the person gets so much as one temporary job of any length within the country they're moving to and that the host country must give them full benefits entitlement from that point forward.

[AstralStorm]

No, that requires full citizenship in one of the member states.

The only problem in preventing illegal immigration since internal border checks are reduced, but UK cash have the border restored to higher scrutiny without running afoul of Schengen.

What the Brexit move actually does is prevent influx of Polish, Czech, Greek, Spanish, Italian etc. citizens into UK... Move of German immigrants into UK is almost certainly of no concern.

[Apocryphon]

Seems conceivable that post-Brexit Tory governments would not do a whit about immigration for the sake of access to labor.

[SirHound]

They couldn’t! Basic demographics mean this kind of approach would, like it or not, end us.

Although given the global inverse correlation between financial prosperity and birth rates, we’ll be back on our feet within a generation!

[Apocryphon]

I think you mean "shouldn't." Capital does all sorts of things that you might find self-destructive. Do you think they'll behave any differently when they're beholden only to Westminster instead of Brussels as well?

That inverse property doesn't seem to be holding up for Japan.

[tkcins]

The current approach will end the native population.

[TomMarius]

As soon as one is a EU citizen, they can move anywhere they want, without any restrictions, because these restrictions apply to immigrants only - as soon as one is a citizen, they are no longer immigrants. EU is different in this regard to the USA.

[zmb_]

This is not true. In the EU there is a freedom of movement of workers. EU citizens from another member state need to either have an employment contract or they can be told to leave the country after six months of stay.

[anticensor]

> they can be told to leave the country after six months of stay.

Which countries practice this?

[TomMarius]

That is not true. The only thing they need to do is to register their permanent residence in the new country and they can't be forbidden. You're misunderstanding the law, this is done to stop people from not registering their real addresses for tax/avoiding legal action purposes.

EU nationals can even vote in municipal politics in their new place of residence even if they're not citizens of that country; another big argument of the opposing party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market#Free_mo...

[zmb_]

The right to movement of workers comes from the treaties and the ECJ decisions[0]. The basic outline is as follows:

1) You have a right to stay in another member state (host) for three months without any restrictions.

2) After three months, if you are not (self-)employed, restrictions can be placed on you. In particular, hosts will require you to prove sufficient resources to support yourself, including health insurance. If you are not employed and cannot prove sufficient means, you can be removed.

3) If you lose your job, you have a right to remain as a job seeker for six months. If you do not find a job within six months, you have to prove to the host that you are actively seeking a job, and that you have a realistic chance to get one. If you cannot prove that, you can be removed.

4) You get a right to permanent residence in the host after legally staying there for five years.

5) It is currently unclear if you have a right to the six months of job seeking before you've had an employment contract in the host state.

While I'm not a lawyer, I have used these rights myself three times now so I've read through them carefully as well as the local regulations in the countries I worked in.

[0]http://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/41/free-mo...

[makomk]

In theory host countries can require you to prove sufficient resources to support yourself, including health insurance. The problem is that this only really works for countries whose healthcare is structured as insurance in the first place, like the continental European states do; no-one has figured out a sensible way to apply this to the UK's single-payer, free at the point of use healthcare.

Non-EEA nationals who are here long term just pay a surcharge for the right to use the NHS, but that's not allowed by the EU rules. In fact, the European Commission's position is that since the NHS is free, this rule should be interpreted as allowing everyone who comes here from other EU states to use it for free even if they're not working and not paying into the NHS, and that this should fulfil the insurance requirement.

There was a bunch of press controversy over the UK enforcing the rule as written in some cases a year or so back too.

[PeterisP]

That "as soon as" is a high barrier to pass - there are many ways for temporary immigration to EU, but there's no mass granting of citizenships to unskilled immigrant workers, just as in USA.

[TomMarius]

The problem is that any EU country can set any rights for gaining a citizenship it wishes, even post facto, without getting any approval. A country could theoretically decide to give citizenship to people for free and other EU states would be forced to agree.

[anticensor]

You also have freedom of movement in the US. I am unaware of any border controls between US states.

[TomMarius]

Yes but the US is a federation. The EU people don't want that.

[anticensor]

EU is slowly progressing towards it anyway. Why else did European Army works start?

[TomMarius]

I'm not saying it's not - I'm saying that there is a certain non trivial amount of people that doesn't like it.

[NLips]

""" the UK can't say to any of them "Hold on a minute. Are you even a fit?" """

This only applies to workers, which roughly means that if they have a genuine job there. Historically, the UK has had more relaxed rules, I believe allowing pretty much indefinite leave to remain without work for EU citizens, but there is no requirement for the UK to allow that under the EU's "Freedom of movement".

[Tomte]

> This, by the way, is a real HN comment as I imagine it. Not just saying something short for peer approval. I know which way HN leans.

Well, I was about to upvote you, because I thought it's unfair your reasonable comment is grayed out. Until I read this. Then I did the opposite.

Downvote complaints become self-fulfilling prophecies.

[man-and-laptop]

I was commenting on something above. A short comment which I interpreted as a short "I don't like this." which I thought was a bit echo-chamber and lacking in substance.

I take your point though. Not great style.