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More than 3 million European Union citizens living in Britain after Brexit will have to be issued with “some form of documentation”, British home secretary Amber Rudd has said.
Amber Rudd told MPs she would not yet set out the details for any new EU ID card, but said: “There will be a need to have some sort of documentation. We are not going to set it out yet. We are going to do it in a phased approach to ensure that we use all the technology advantages that we are increasingly able to harness to ensure that all immigration is carefully handled.”
The home secretary’s statement came in response to Labour’s Hilary Benn, who told MPs that EU citizens already in the UK would need to be documented so that employers and landlords could distinguish them from EU citizens arriving after Brexit, theguardian.co.uk reports.
During Home Office questions in the Commons, Rudd also said she was aware of the need to continue the seasonal agricultural workers’ scheme after Brexit, but again ruled out demands to remove international students from the annual net migration target.
The same source reads that it has been estimated by the Migration Observatory that the complexities of the current paper-based system, which includes completing an 85-page form, means it could take 140 years to register all 3 million EU citizens in Britain at current rates of processing if they all apply.
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