Image: Protests at Yarls Wood immigration detention centre, iDJ photography/Flickr.
Fewer than 500 days are left until the UK is due to leave the European Union. Yet the most significant obstacles to the ‘smooth, orderly Brexit’ promised by Theresa May have not been created by Brussels. They lie in wait in Croydon, Sheffield and the half a dozen other sites where the Home Office is shamefully unprepared for the most significant challenges our immigration system has faced in four decades.
The Home Affairs Select Committee today grills Immigration Minister Brandon Lewis on his department’s ability to deal with these challenges. Three million EEA nationals and their families currently residing in Britain will have to be processed and regularised. And 450 million Europeans will become subject to broken and cruel systems hitherto reserved for the ‘rest of the world’.
