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6 April 2020
We have Brexit and we have a Covid-19 emergency.
The latter highlights the need for every nation to be able to suspend migration on a temporary basis.
It has cast a sidelight on deficiencies in the proposed points based immigration system.
The system would be better based on a tripod with not too rigid legs and even extendible as often used by photographers.
The first leg would be proximate sea crossing migration. This would encompass mainly Europeans.
The second leg would be close family reunion. This would encompass the rest of the world but not be excessive in numbers.
Between these two legs the real diversity in skills not based on financial numbers that the country may need can be accommodated and will open the door to reciprocal agreements with countries like New Zealand based on the principles established.
The third leg would be the points based system that would sweep up the rest of the cases and could be based on economic criteria.
As before, our negotiating partners in the EU will have to shoulder a little responsibility if Britain moves solely to a points based system. They have not prioritised this issue preferring not to put it ahead of a full trade agreement. The evident limitation of this is that Britain may not agree a particularly extensive trade agreement. It is doing without many EU imports in its health lockdown. That the parties are in practice now already agreed on civil nuclear cooperation two months on from Brexit shows that vital issues can be cleared.
BREXIT BECKONS
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
The Tories have convincingly won over one constituency: towns in England that have felt held down from self-expression by Labour for too long.
They have failed, however, to win over another important constituency, though so has Labour: the young.
They do not feel held down, or at least more than any generation of young, but many may worry about a lack of opportunity.
Opportunity is a natural arena for Toryism to play in, especially in this new decade.
So it is that the Brexit debate cannot end.
Business can look after itself. That is not a crux for the young. How many of them, indeed who in the general population, gives a damn about trade deals except when they are projected to have negative consequences?
Migration is a topic that the young do have views on.
The number of young bus and coach drivers who I have heard say over the past decade that they are off to Australia in a few months time because they cannot make ends meet is higher than I would have expected.
Will they have been permitted to permanently emigrate at the end of the decade?
For sure, in a year's time it may be that Swiss and Norwegians are persona grata for emigration to the EU but Britons much less so.
Not that it is straightforward; the Swiss are reported as perceiving themselves as having problems with EU immigration.
If you are older you may be concerned about anything that disturbs what you have struggled for and immigration may be in the frame.
If you are younger and not a member of a political party you are probably mostly unconcerned by esoteric concepts like redistribution of money or mutual recognition in trade agreements and simply want opportunity and one of those opportunities is freedom to emigrate without bureaucracy, albeit rarely permanently.
With opportunity, people can find their own way to recognition and distribution.
In the 20th century Britons and Americans had some of the greatest freedoms to emigrate unchallenged of all nationalities. That is coming to an end.
'Natural' migration has tended to take place between neighbouring states, especially those with land borders, in times of stress. It is part of human nature to displace short distances.
If a nuclear power station went up in Britain we would want to emigrate to nearby territories. It is unlikely that inalienably sovereign British territory like Northern Ireland or the Falklands would have the infrastructure to take millions of us.
It might not even be one of our stations that went up. There are others on the southern side of the Channel.
So a rational migration policy after Brexit would be to conclude 'almost freedom of movement' agreements with all the states with proximate sea crossings to us - Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France.
Beyond that should surely come similar agreeements with countries that have borne the brunt of British emigration in the recent past - Spain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Include all these and the scale of net migration one way or another is likely to be reduced.
Such agreements are more important than trade deals, express goodwill and should come first.