A fantasy of future Great Britain

Once you’ve read the new Tory migration plan with a certain distance, it’s actually quite funny. The UK just got scrapped from the list of potential places to live for EU citizens – and? There are other twenty-seven options.

With the sole purpose of pleasing Tory voters, this bunch of bullet points is a bit like that partner who insistently threats to leave you but who ends up being dumped. A B1 English level to work in this country is not a high one; around me, it’s always been the lowest. The level of many with a university degree who saved to come here, who took English lessons in the evenings after work, and with parents who maybe tightened their belts to help during the first year. It’s the bottom line to have a superficial conversation, open a bank account, visit your GP, and politely reject a pair of Jehovah Witnesses knocking on your door. Something below that B1 bar is self-isolation. 

As I went through the list of requirements of the immigration plan, I began to fantasise of that new Great Britain in which all the jobs that foreigners currently steal will pass to British hands. All baristas will have been born in the UK, as will the fruit pickers, shelf-fillers, cleaners, carers, kitchen porters, house keepers, or bar staff. In the meantime, those foreigners starting at the 25K minimum annual salary – and professionally progressing from there – will be ‘obliged’ to live in certain cities and areas, find love and friendship with those with similar views, establish roots with them, and enjoy wages that allow them to leave this miserable weather for a bit of sun once or twice a year.