You are also aware that the EU specifically allows to limit the freedom of movement on "grounds of public policy, public security or public health"?
You are also aware that the recent migrant crisis of the past few years has caused these kinds of barriers to be raised in response? Proving that such restrictions are not just mere hypotheticals?
The European Union is, after all, not a suicide compact.
For comparison, the impact of banning the printing presses only materialised quite a lot later than it happened. Remember that Europe used to be a lot of independent (and feuding) nations, rather than a union of any sort. There were unions of sorts under the Catholic and Orthodox churches, but England for instance was not part of those unions. it was in those times that Europe went through the scientific and industrial revolutions, while the empires I mentioned slowly stagnated.
British immigration policy is British immigration policy because as per European law it has mechanisms to prevent benefit immigration that is isn’t exercising
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:...
The fact is successive governments have rightly identified that both skilled and cheap labour from immigration is keeping our economy afloat. Otherwise we’d see them at least tap the brakes. But they haven’t.
OK, so a politician living a comfortable life thinks one thing. Individual voters thought something else.
I believe the document above refers to emergency powers to stop immigration control under limited conditions. It doesn't solve any long-term impacts that an experiment like "free movement" between 28 countries can have.
[edit]
I can see why certain things are more nuanced. Somebody mentioned that immigration from outside the EU into the EU, and then into the UK, has certain restrictions. These exemptions seem to be in place for the UK and Ireland and some other countries.
By TPM:
> It can get into 27 countries depending on their terms for immigration, but then cannot simply use free movement to move to the UK. This is incorrect. As a non-EU national, your rights in this regard are severely restricted. After five years in the EU, with a means of support, you are entitled to move freely within EU with the exception of some countries, notably the UK. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_resident_(European_U....
[edit 20:40]
My comment wasn't just its first paragraph though. There's the problem that monocultures (like in crop species) might be better in the short-term, but can create long-term risk (combine your strengths together on the one hand, but make the same mistakes and have all the same weaknesses). I gave the copyright example. It's a lot easier for the copyright lobby to take over one entity, the EU, than over 28 countries each with disconnected regulatory systems. Even regulatory treaties don't result in monoculture, because somebody can leave a treaty much more easily than they can leave a superstate like the EU.
The only problem in preventing illegal immigration since internal border checks are reduced, but UK cash have the border restored to higher scrutiny without running afoul of Schengen.
What the Brexit move actually does is prevent influx of Polish, Czech, Greek, Spanish, Italian etc. citizens into UK... Move of German immigrants into UK is almost certainly of no concern.
Although given the global inverse correlation between financial prosperity and birth rates, we’ll be back on our feet within a generation!
