[A short one this Ides of March as Life momentarily heats up]
In last Sunday’s paper, I came across an interesting article entitled “May impatient for divorce”. The story, from AFP, was about how British Prime Minister Theresa May will not “keep paying ‘huge sums’ into the EU budget after Brexit.” She’s impatient to start the divorce, it seems.
A Bill empowering May to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, starting a two-year divorce process, will return to parliament on Monday.
Final approval is expected by the middle of the week, leaving the prime minister’s path clear to start the withdrawal.
At which point I say, not so fast.
The face of the immigrant worker in the UK is the Polish plumber and that can be explained quite simply merely by trawling various boards over the past decade. The Poles were/are seen as hardworking, courteous, professional, reasonably priced and on-time…characteristics that were difficult to ascribe to their Anglo peers (as anyone who’s watched UK sitcoms over the years will observe). With this in mind, what are the chances of Polish plumbers being allowed to stay in post-Brexit Britain?
(As a side-note, from now on I’ll be using the term “Polish plumber” as shorthand for blue-collar foreign workers as even the Polish plumbers currently working in England are now being shouldered aside by their Romanian and Bulgarian peers.)
Back in late 2014, Mark Reckless of the UKIP party said that:
[I]n the near term we’d have to have a transitional period, and I think we should probably allow people who are currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period.
Upon hearing this, the audience couldn’t contain themselves and burst into laughter.
I don’t know why. Surely that makes sense…unless the members of the audience were so self-righteous that they couldn’t imagine their personal nightmare of Brexit ever occurring. Hmmm, wonder where I’ve encountered such arrogance since? Anyway, moving right along, and perhaps something lined up for the future:
Mr Reckless also suggested introducing an “Australian style” points system for new immigrants.
And now we come to the core of this second of March’s posts. You see, the Poles don’t want to leave the UK. The wages in England are high…the wages in Poland are low. Poles may be spat upon, jeered and called names by the average British person-in-the-street but all the average plumber has to do is keep his eye on the almighty pound and a lot of that nastiness fades away to the margins. The bigger problem for the Polish plumber, and those of his ilk, has to do with qualifications. Plumbers aren’t usually tertiary-educated, and in snobby, xenophobic Britain, that means that they’re essentially second-class citizens. Moreover, they’re second-class citizens attempting to fit into a quite rigid society where everyone has their own social strata already locked up. Downtown Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs and Harry Potter may be interesting to watch (or not) but you wouldn’t want to live it. Interestingly, the most room for immigrant manoeuvring is in the middle rather than at either end, as our own experiences country-hopping have shown.
With this in mind, I think that the day for the permanent resident Polish plumber is gone. At this point, it makes sense for the British construction and contractor industry to begin flexing its muscles and lobby against permanent visas for equivalently qualified foreign workers. I can see unions agreeing to a, say, three-year renewable visa, but nothing much beyond that.
The more interesting sector are the tertiary-qualified foreign workers and, oh my, there are lots of those in Britain as well. They don’t want to leave either. Whether to highlight an issue or ready the British population (I’m not too sure) Expats Blog tells us that :
A survey of EU doctors working in the UK revealed 60 per cent of respondents are intending to leave the UK’s national health services, with Brexit the reason given by 91 per cent of respondents.
Then we come to the pain point:
The GMC survey involved 2115 expat doctors originating from the European Economic Area, all of whom are at present working within the NHS, with the results indicating Britain’s heathcare services would be under severe threat of collapse until alternative medical professionals could be employed. The BMA study produced similar, if not quite so dramatic results, but confirmed the lack of government reassurance over the right to remain is already having a detrimental effect on health services in the UK. [my emphasis]
Workers with degrees are treated differently to workers without degrees. Their commodification occurs at a higher price-point, with more perks for those who stayed at school for longer. Or, to put it another way, while a Polish plumber may get a renewable three-year visa for himself, a Polish doctor will most likely get a much longer renewable visa and visa approvals for the partner and dependent children.
Staring at the writing on the wall (sharp-eyed, the British Medical Association is), the BMA has warned the government that “it will need to prioritise UK heathcare services in the post-Brexit period and is urging the granting of permanent residence to all EU expats employed at UK hospitals. It’s also recommending a simplification of immigration processes for overseas doctors wishing to work in the NHS in the future.” [my emphasis]
Needless to say, the poor plumbers won’t be getting the same degree of consideration.
If there’s anything that Brexit has thrown into sharp relief for me, it’s how countries have reduced people to dollar amounts. We can get three H1-B visa holders for the price of one US-trained programmer. We can offer better visa terms to educated, versus non-educated, workers. We can dangle permanent residency in front of punters and pick and choose who we want. This isn’t equality, unless one is talking the equality of the slave market.
If one of the benefits of globalisation has been the opportunity to travel the world and work in different countries, the downside is having to transform yourself and your family into a “use case” in order to do just that.
“This will be a defining moment for the UK,” May says, “as we begin the process of forging a new role for ourselves in the world, as a strong country with control over our borders and over our laws.”
Yep, and they won’t be able to do it without foreigners. Caveat emptor on both sides, I think.
UPDATE: I originally wrote this post yesterday, pondering on which way the UK was going to jump and deciding that they were essentially going to grab EU nationals living in the UK by the short and curlies. Out with permanent residency and in with multi-year visas. It looks like I didn’t have to wait long for validation. Just now (17:15), I read the following at Expats Blog:
A wave of resentment and anger swept across the UK’s EU expat community…after hearing the House of Commons had rejected the Upper House’s amendment unilaterally guaranteeing their post-Brexit rights to remain …
The amendment voted in by the House of Lords last week aimed to force the government into guaranteeing…the rights of EU citizens in the UK in advance of the triggering of Article 50…[and] was defeated by a majority of 48, sending the EU expat community into shock.
Founder of the 3Million campaign group Nicolas Hatton told the Independent newspaper he was ‘utterly devastated’ at the result, adding he’d seen the Lords’ amendment as a last chance to ensure EU nationals in the UK were at least treated like human beings. [my emphasis]
One poster, Jose Rodriguez-Olveria, shared his disgust by saying he felt sick, both on his own behalf and that of the millions of EU citizens who’d contributed to British society for more than four decades. He…said he’d lived, worked and paid tax in the UK for 18 years, and now feels he’s being treated as a ‘pawn in a game of chess’…Marlies Haselton believes [that]…the millions of EU expats in the UK are now simply bargaining chips for the rights of UK citizens living in Europe. [my emphasis]
EU expats nothing but “bargaining chips”? Pawns in a game of chess? Not being treated like human beings? No shit, Sherlock. Didn’t any of the people commenting ever pay attention to History at school? Seriously, what did they expect from the English? Respect? Fools.
© KS Augustin, 2017
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