I Call Britain Home, But I Can’t Live Here Anymore

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- A few months after the 2016 Brexit referendum, I called the U.K. Home Office to find out what my future held. As a French citizen living in London, my right to stay was connected to Britain’s membership in the European Union, and Prime Minister Theresa May had just made it clear those days were over. In an unnerving speech attacking “citizens of nowhere” and “low-skilled immigration” from Europe as social ills that needed fixing, she pledged to end the free movement of EU citizens—whatever the economic cost. It wasn’t really the idea of having to get a new ID or fill out forms that spooked me—when my parents moved to the U.K. in the 1980s, they registered with the police—but rather the hostile rhetoric and policy uncertainty of a government gunning for Brexit.

The voice at the other end of the line didn’t have all the answers, but did make two things clear. The first: My French passport, which guaranteed the right to live and work in any EU member state, wasn’t going to mean much in Britain anymore. And the second: My 28 years’ total residency in the U.K., from the age of 3 months, weren’t going to mean much, either. I’d lived in France from 2009 to 2014, and that had reset the timer on my British residency. I’d have to wait an additional three years to build up my right to stay. I was an oddity in the caseload, in a kind of immigration limbo, doubtless only one of many.

Since then, a lot of the fog has cleared. I’ve achieved the milestone the U.K. expected of me: five years of continuous residency in Britain. There is, finally, something approaching a plan for EU citizens in the U.K. to try to organize their lives and secure their rights. And there’s even a Brexit deal, signed between the U.K. and the EU. Whether it actually gets through a fractious British Parliament, and in what state, is anyone’s guess—but it’s a start.

Still, after the exhausting, stressful, panic-stricken, personal roller coaster that Brexit has been for EU nationals such as myself—uncertainty, fear, a brief flirtation with something close to reassuring stability, and then straight back to dysfunction—I have little desire to stick around to see what happens. I’m set to leave the U.K. soon, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.

The U.K. has done its best to make EU nationals feel unwanted over the past three years. Despite a mountain of evidence that EU immigrants are neither more employed nor better employed than native workers, and that they’re net contributors to the public purse, the government has painted them as job stealers and benefits tourists. Amber Rudd, who served in cabinets of both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, said EU workers had taken jobs British people could do, and vowed to keep tabs on businesses’ hiring practices. Liam Fox, another former cabinet minister, said they were “cards” to play in negotiations with Brussels. And as for May, her speech was only the beginning: Right up until her final months in office, she said Europeans had “jumped the queue” in front of worthier migrants.

It’s true that anti-immigrant rhetoric, and indeed public opinion, has softened a bit since then. That’s because it’s now clear what the economic impact of driving away migrants and money will be on the U.K., a country that depends on trade and has a high current-account deficit. There are 65,000 EU nationals working in England’s health service, and Europeans make up 13% of the City of London’s finance and insurance jobs. The U.K. is now promising to allow EU nationals already living in the country the right to stay, while also vowing to control future arrivals with a selective, points-based system. “We want EU citizens … to stay,” Home Secretary Priti Patel said in September.

Still, Boris Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street has brought a different kind of uncertainty. The events leading up to his new deal with the EU—his unlawful attempt to suspend Parliament, his hardball embrace of a no-deal Brexit—tanked the pound, split the country, and spooked Britain’s civil service. The government has stockpiled food, medicine, and even toilet paper in case there’s no amicable Brexit deal. Barbara Drozdowicz, who runs the East European Resource Center for vulnerable migrants, told me last month: “People wonder if this government can reliably pay benefits.”

And while the hostile rhetoric has died down, the policies designed to “take back control” of migration have not. The Europeans heeding Patel’s calls to stay are being offered a messy alternative to leaving: “settled” status, or the right to stay for those who have already lived in the U.K. for five years, and “pre-settled” status, the right to stay for those who haven’t. Both are conditional. Settled status expires if its holder goes abroad for five years; pre-settled status automatically ends after five years, and must be renewed.

It may be better than nothing, or being kicked out, but it’s still a post-Brexit downgrade. There’s a fear landlords and employers won’t look kindly on these labels, especially when it comes to the inferior pre-settled category.

The U.K.’s past experience in managing immigration crackdowns, however gradual, is not encouraging. Back in the 1960s, anti-immigrant pressure led to an end to free movement for former subjects of the British Empire. The haphazard and politically motivated changes left, among others, Ugandans, Kenyans, and Tanzanians unable to freely live and work in Britain despite having U.K. colonial passports. Rights aren’t always permanent; the Brexit settlement might not be either.

For the 1.9 million people who have started the application process, the result isn’t always what they expect. Statistics show that monthly approvals for settled status are going down (from 66% of applications in April to 57% in September), while those for pre-settled status are going up (34% in April to 43% in September). It may be coincidence more than bureaucratic error, but there have been widely reported howls of frustration from those who feel they’ve unjustly fallen through the cracks.

It’s this tense atmosphere that makes leaving the U.K. seem like not such a bad option. It’s certainly a choice that other European countries find attractive. Poland’s ambassador to the U.K. recently called on his 800,000 fellow citizens living on British soil to seriously consider the possibility of coming back to their “homeland.” France’s Emmanuel Macron has issued a similar call—“revenez!”—and plenty of EU countries are rolling out tax and business incentives to attract workers and companies worried about London’s post-EU future. Anecdotally, in my circle of friends, everyone knows someone who’s gone back to the continent.

Nobody is going to uproot their life because a politician asked nicely. But the (admittedly patchy) data suggests some people are voting with their feet. Estimates indicate that while there are still more arrivals overall from the EU into the U.K. than departures going the other way, specific nationalities from Central and Eastern Europe are leaving Britain faster than newcomers arrive. Returning to a country like Poland isn’t seen as much of a hardship, economically speaking: Its real GDP grew 5.1% last year, vs. 1.4% for the U.K. Unemployment there was less than 4%, while in the U.K. it was 4.1%. Also, the pound has fallen 14% against the zloty since the referendum, an immediate hit to anyone sending money back home.

The gap between continental Europe and Britain doesn’t seem that wide anymore. Yes, even the U.K. at its most dysfunctional can claim to be outperforming the likes of Italy, and Brexit has produced nothing as violent as the riots of the Gilets Jaunes, or Yellow Jackets, that trashed French monuments, ministries, and storefronts. But Europe’s brain drain follows job opportunities, and there are more of those on the continent than there used to be. French unemployment is at a 10-year low, and there’ve been almost 1 million jobs created since March 2015. The U.K. is holding up, but investment is falling.

EU capitals such as Paris are even having a go at imitating the U.K. by attracting more financial-services firms, holding international commercial court disputes in English, and establishing more English-language schools. I am skeptical that, in the long run, the imitation will beat the original. But that also depends on how messy Brexit gets. Alban de Clermont-Tonnerre, a partner at Clerville Investment Management, says that even if a huge Brexodus of finance jobs to the euro zone hasn’t happened, it’s still contingent on the U.K.’s non-EU fortunes.

The irony is that the U.K. used to celebrate the legacy of its European arrivals, from the Huguenot families that partly financed the creation of the Bank of England, to the Polish and Italian workers who came after World War II. Its embrace of capitalism as a religion that tolerated all comers was singled out for praise by the Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire. These traditions are taking a hit. Some will blame the EU for the impact of immigration, but the truth is that the U.K. ignored all the sensible limits on free movement used by other euro region countries during the boom years. The xenophobic backlash that sparked the U.K.’s decision to leave the world’s biggest single market is just as extreme.

By the time Brexit happens, I’ll likely be watching from Paris and Brussels, where—with Germany on the brink of recession—the European political center of gravity is shifting. Selfishly, as a journalist, there’ll be more drama to cover. Europe is no utopia and has plenty of internal and external sparks that could light a fire. But, with a bit of luck, it will be a long time before my own immigration status gets in the way of a good story.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net

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