To think freedom of movement is not understood by most!

[Onetwothree4]

I'm an EU citizen, lived most of my life in the UK and I can't stand this political nonsense of lies and misinterpretation anymore! Do you guys know that the freedom of movement exercised by most EU countries is as follows:

1. You can move to another EU country without a visa for 3 months to stay, study or look for work
2. After 3 months you will have to apply for a permission to settle based on your employment, family ties or studies
3. You will also have to prove you are financially able to look after yourself and not become a burden on the country's social welfare system.
4. You have to apply to be included in the social security system to be entitled to healthcare, education, benefits etc..

The UK GOVERNMENT decided to operate this free for all approach of people being able to just jump on the plane and go straight to the doctors. Most EU countries (maybe even all others!) did not! You can not do this in other EU countries.

The culprit is the UK government, not the EU! Why did they do that? I don't know. Probably needed the workforce? This is all smoke and mirrors and a big game played by the privileged boys in politics who want the top job.

Just to spell it out: If you wanted to move to my country, which is a full EU country with euro as currency, you would have to LEAVE after 3 months if you could not prove a valid reason to be there. This is how EU works. It's the UK law makers who took a very liberal approach to these rules and created this mess called Brexit.

I knew this and it has been said before on MN but it needs saying again and again

Absolutely

The system now practically invites anyone and everyone to misuse it.
I know. I live in Italy and can register with a GP because I have a permanent work contract. Without it you have to pay for health insurance. It really gets me when people complain about NHS health tourism when at the same time not realizing that we have decided not to impose restrictions.

I think Jack Straw once admitted that the policy had backfired but he seems to have (wisely) kept a low profile ever since.

Has Tony Blair ever addressed the fact that he was responsible for mass immigration in his pro-Remain speeches?

Not personally (happy to be corrected) but the current Labour leadership have acknowledged it was wrong.

I'm seeing a pattern here, John Major allows Maastrict to go through without asking the population for their view

Why should he have ? The UK doesn't govern by referendums and indeed pokes fun at countries that do. That was the answer then, and given the current clusterfuck, it's something that should have been adhered to ...

The culprit is the UK government, not the EU!

But surely not in all cases? After all, EU migrants are able to claim child benefit for children not living in the country, aren't they? That's not something that our government couldn't prevent, is it? Because it was one of the concessions David Cameron asked for when he was negotiating with the EU.

I'm not trying to be goady by bringing this up - I'm just genuinely interested in where the line is drawn.

And what's the solution here? Say we stop Brexit, but start using these opt-outs - would people be happy? I suspect not. And I don't even mean Leave voters! I have a feeling that a lot of the more extreme Remainers would feel the government was being discriminatory / xenophobic / unwelcoming to foreigners.

Excellent post OP - this is something that really grates for me too. DH and I moved to an EU country 10 years ago. Despite being UK / EU citizens,, we certainly couldn't rock up and just start claiming benefits or accessing the national health system. We had to prove our identity, that we had means of financial support i.e. a full-time job locally, we had to declare ourselves to the tax authorities etc - we had to jump through many hoops. AS a result we have the same rights as locals do, in terms of access to healthcare, education, etc - we really don't live any differently to the locals. There's no way we could rock up to a Dr or hospital here and just show them proof of our address to get access to services!

Several things that don't help in the UK: the NHS free-at-the-point-of-treatment-no-questions-asked policy. No ID cards. No register of foreign nationals. None of this is forced on the UK by the EU: it has been their own choice all along.

The UK, London especially, is known as the easiest place to come to work "on the black" because all of the above make it so easy to move there, work cash in hand, get a rental address and access both healthcare and benefits. No questions asked. No requirement to register anywhere.

Agh! Could not couldn't!

That's not something that our government could prevent, is it?

Other EU countries can and do enforce the 3 month rule.

I've worked in two and knew UK citizens who had to leave every 3 months for a couple of days or a week because they were living off their foreign partner but not married and weren't working. (A couple were really fussy about the type of job they wanted even though the companies I was working for had vacancies that suited their skillsets and lack of language skills.) Those who had families with children, due to the children ensured they had proper settled status by getting a job.

People don't seem to realise you can move your unemployment benefits over if necessary. I had that discussion once with a guy in the job centre as he was working there temporarily but the next week I found a job in the UK.

Er slight correction,
We did apply restrictions to new countries joining the EU

Different rules applied to A2 nationals (Bulgarian and Romanian) who joined the EU in 2007) Croatians (joined EU in 2013) and A8 nationals (Eastern and central European countries that joined the EU in 2004) (look it up)

They all had a 5 year accession period during which nationals could start work here only with a permit, they absolutely did not have free access to housing, jobs, benefits!

Just to point out that there were restrictions on citizens from the A8 countries settling in the UK. There was a worker registration scheme that they had to sign once working, and only once they had done this (and been in work for a certain period, I can't recall what it was) would they be entitled to benefits. The scheme was in place for the first seven years of the countries joining the EU.

One problem was that some were choosing to not register and work illegally, and many were (and still are) brought over by gangs and treated as slaves.

ColaFreezePop So that silly 3 month rule really works then, let’s put it this way, the majority of people had concerns over FOM and how it was affecting them, Labour called us Bigots, Con/Lib done nothing to stop or slow it down, Con kept trying to hit targets, meanwhile over 3.5 M ( we don’t really know ) have increased our stretched population, putting strain on housing, services, schools, etc, perhaps the average person saw the referendum as a chance to do something past and previous governments done nothing about, controlling FOM, it got to a stage when normal, people raised concerns about immigration were accused of being racist etc

Onetwothree4 - and out of interest, what do you think the solution is here? You've listed restrictions on EU migration in your country - should our Remain MPs be campaigning to have these imposed here?

Hester - the problem does not lie with the EU migrants but with government defunding local services. Statistically EU migrants pay in MORE in tax and take out LESS in welfare and services than British citizens. I realize it might not look like that if you are in an area with a high number of immigrants but those are the facts.

But, as I have said on another thread, it doesn't matter that it's not the EU's "fault". I think a lot of people do understand that. But the choice we were given was leave or remain. There was no "step up and do your job British government" option!

WallyWallyWally: Several things that don't help in the UK: the NHS free-at-the-point-of-treatment-no-questions-asked policy.

But didn't our doctors just vote that it was racist to charge foreigners for treatment? Would they really be happy if we started introducing legislation that saw increased charging of EU migrants?

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/making-tourists-pay-to-use-nhs-is-racist-say-doctors-7qswlhbsd

The other thing the Blair government did was cry "Racist!" if anyone ever said, hang on a minute, too many people, too fast, the system isn't coping and we need more houses and investment in infrastructure. Nobody, but nobody, was allowed to say anything that could be construed as criticism. They were extremely effective at silencing debate with the threat of being called a racist and/or a bigot. See the Rochdale lady. I'm from Rochdale and it is completely unrecognisable from how it was when I was a child. But it's racist to point that fact out - although most of the changes in Rochdale over my lifetime are from non-EU immigration of course, Mrs Duffy demonstrated the fear of being labelled a racist by only mentioning Eastern Europeans. And everywhere else the system is creaking through a rapid large increase in population and no investment in infrastructure. All the government's fault and their choice. The lies they tell to cover all this up are utterly disgraceful. And it is still going on. They can control immigration if they choose to.

The same tactics are being used now about the trans thing - debate and concerns are being silenced with cries of "transphobe" and "bigot".

Not that you will find any detail in then press about any negative impact of immigration, but every Leave voter I know has cited this as a major factor. Unfortunately they don't seem to realise that leaving the EU won't change the non-EU immigration, but the chance to vote gave them a voice previously denied. And still the lies keep coming out of Westminster (and Holyrood, as it happens).

I wish they would either hold another referendum with accurate and truthful information published, or just cancel Brexit but then address all the concerns of the populace which led to the Leave vote. A government which did that would have my vote.

The Eu FOM allows an open door policy, you try keeping track of over 3.5 million immigrants, let’s be honest we haven’t a clue how many there is, the ID card system got voted out,

Most other EU countries know exactly who lives there, where, for how long and so on. I used to get letters when there were Euro Elections, local elections or anything big happened affecting EU rights. The local authority wrote me and my family (one each, all adults) a lovely letter after Brexit saying that there may be uncertainty but gave us a number to call for advice etc. They also, when we hadn't applied for citizenship by early February wrote and asked us if we planned to.

And that if we handed in the forms within a week we'd be guaranteed to get the answer, anticipated as positive, before 29th March. So we did.

As to treating locals and EU citizens the same. Yes. You have to. If you advertise for a job and you want to employ someone from outside the EU, for eg, you have to show that there isn't an EU person/applicant that could do it instead. You can't turn down a Brit or someone from Denmark in Germany, for example just for not being German (assuming they are qualified).

When you get your first job you rock up with your registration documents and they register you for tax and health insurance. We get a health insurance card. You have to take that if you access health services.

When i was made redundant I had to sign on for Unemployment (for the pension and health insurance contributions) and the first thing they checked was my nationality. They told me the rules about having to leave after 3 months unless there was another reason i should be allowed to stay (eg, many many years of tax/national insurance type contributions, spouse, dependent children here, independently wealthy etc etc) but if it had just been me and I'd not been here as long as I have I'd have had to go back to the UK after 3 months if I hadn't found a job. That was made very clear.

All the things the UK didn't want to do.

@LondonGal76

Sorry was typing and my child bumped into me deleting the whole post.
@LondonGal76 was meant to say you are right regarding child benefits. This is one EU rule no state has a veto on.

Say you are a Swedish family, living in Sweden with two kids. Dad gets a job in Germany and moves there to work. Mom is a sahm. Dad pays taxes in Germany and is the main breadwinner. Therefore child benefit is paid out from the country's treasury who gets to collect the income tax ie. Germany in this case. It's quite simple.

Is that true OP?

I have used free movement to the max and lived in Sweden, Holland, Spain and Germany and was never threatened to leave, i literally just moved to these places and stayed (for 9 months to 2 yrs) in the past 20yrs

Where are you from?

But didn't our doctors just vote that it was racist to charge foreigners for treatment?

No.

Pleased to have cleared that up.

I already knew this too, if the government had done anything about it when they had the chance it would have been one less reason for me to vote to leave (probably a lot of other people as well), but they didn't, so I voted how I voted.

@ChickenyChick surely you had to register your presence in all those countries before accessing services? And if you were employed, you automatically would have gained the right to stay since you have the means to support yourself? No one hunts you down if you don't leave after 3 months!

Leapyearlover But FOM is an EU issue, the government had know idea how many European citizens were going to come here using FOM, how can you plan for schools, hospitals, housing, when you don’t know what your population is going to be year on year, yes birth rates, but will it 100,000 or 1million next year, that’s where control comes in , FOM no control

*DGRossetti But didn't our doctors just vote that it was racist to charge foreigners for treatment?

No.

Pleased to have cleared that up.*

I'm not sure what the snippy response was in aid of, but I was just quoting a report from The Times (which I've reprinted below). Presumably you're saying that the headline / quotes in the article have been taken out of context / exaggerated - fair enough. However, my point was that the OP seems to be saying that all the UK's problems are because we've been too liberal, but I'm struggling to see how Remain voters would accept the government tightening up regulations around EU migration and access to benefits / services (never mind whether it would be acceptable to Leave voters!)

From The Times: Up to 500 delegates at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Belfast backed a motion that said that asking overseas visitors to pay made medical staff “complicit” in racism.

“We are doctors not border guards,” Omar Risk said during the debate. “Charging migrants for accessing NHS services is a fundamentally racist endeavour — we are complicit in the oppressive regime.”