London 29 Jan 2019 – The EU should not get back to negotiations with representatives of a government who is going to introduce a new law prescribing the systematic restriction of EU citizens’ rights. The debate on this shameful bill has been set before the second attempt of Conservative PM to get concessions from Brussels on her Deal already voted down, and this move might represent a blackmail, hopefully the last one, as an attempt to push the EU back to the table because the Immigration bill is a real threat to EU citizens in the UK.
The Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill easily passed the second reading at the House of Commons with 297 votes in favour to 234 against on 28th January. The Bill will have to go on through Committee Stage, Report Stage, Third Reading, Lords Amendments until the final Royal Assent. It passed thanks to Labour Party complacency with a far right government because this way they hope to gain votes from BAME and those who voted leave.
Shadow Home Office, Diane Abbott, first announced the Party would not oppose, but only after the outcry on social media, Labour made a U-turn prospecting to vote against with a limited single line whip (non binding indication to vote), and also stating MPs would be free from attending the vote (inviting them to abstain) in order to obtain the result the Labour wanted: the bill to pass, though they announced amendments at later stages.
Labour MP Diane Abbott while announcing Labour Party will not oppose the Immigration Bill
The bill formally extends indefinite detention and hostile environment anti-immigration policies to helpless and non represented EU citizens discarded by both Tories and Labour because they don’t have the right to vote at general elections: EU citizens do not turn handy as they do not bring political consensus, but, instead, they can bring political dissent and awareness as many escaped corrupted countries and oppressive regimes within the EU; and this explains why British political establishment is not interested in them.
Furthermore the bill provides unlimited detention. For an innocent to end in one of the British dangerous immigration detention centres it’s enough being refused the permanent stay documents or visa, even if only for administrative mistakes. Home Office records show how many immigrants with national insurance contributions dated back from 30 years have been detained against the law.
This shameful alt-right policy enhanced by the Tories confirms itself as a definite step into the full authoritarianism for this specific reason: arrests and detentions are entirely operated by the government’s Home Office, and not by Police who are an independent body. An European Union citizen, child, or family, can be taken from their homes and sent to a penitentiary with no charges, no trial, no lawyer assisting them. And this can happen under instruction of the Home Office. (Our best wishes to political opposers …)
The intervention of Labour MP Harriet Harman during the debate clarifies some of the key points of this Nazist bill.
For years the UK arrested unlawfully EU citizens as one of the most serious cases confirms: Marcin Gwozdzinski the Polish young man arrested in 2017, only because he slept rough and had a scuffle, and brought to a detention centre where he died after being put in a violent environment which scared him and pushed him to suicide.
The EU at that time did not intervene.
Time for words and slogans is now over. The EU institutions and representatives must intervene to stop what it is profiling as a systematic discrimination and violence against its citizens. They have everybody against: Conservatives, Labour’s majority, the trade union Unite, many British employers, and first and foremost the British society who is finding a common interest in strengthening links with the Commonwealth. This means EU citizens rights to live in the UK must be enforced or the EU must find a solution in practical terms of chances for those who escaped corrupted countries to be able to find a decent country to live and work safely within the EU.
Apart from those MPs who voted against, the Labour Party position is one of full complacency because Corbyn’s main goal is to win general elections, as result Labour are pursuing an immigration policy which on the one side appeases the trade union Unite by putting an end to free movement and preventing low skilled workers to enter the UK, on the other avoids supporting EU citizens in order to gain the votes of British ethnic minorities (Asian, African, Indian, Pakistani and generally speaking the Commonwealth origin communities) as these ones see Brexit as a chance to get rid of EU immigrants’ competition because Europeans do not need visas to work and are not racially discriminated by the white British and these facts make EU citizens look like a privileged elite of newcomers as their influx to the UK increased soon after the financial crisis. People from ex British colonies are millions in the UK and can make a stark difference in general elections: Brexit is their chance to revenge and emerge from a status of discrimination. The EU citizens are paying for this and other British injustices with their lives.
Talkeurope.org 