GETTY Theresa May will not be able to send home EU migrants who arrive before Brexit

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The new Prime Minister oversaw such savage cutbacks to her former department it is incapable of keeping track of the number of European migrants entering the country and organising their return, according to the Centre for European Reform (CER). And at current rates, it would take Britain 140 YEARS to trace and deport all EU migrants, a separate study by the Migration Observatory revealed. The CER said trying to send EU workers back to the continent is “politically attractive” but “impractical, of dubious legality and against British interests”.

CER researchers Camino Mortera-Martinez and John Springford said the “sheer bureaucratic effort required to identify and expel EU migrants” would make such a policy unenforceable. European citizens arriving in the UK are currently not required to sign up to any sort of database, so the Government does not even know how long they have been in the country. The report also states that the Home Office is now woefully understaffed following six years of savage budget cuts, and has neither the personnel nor the money to create one.

GETTY The Centre for European Research says the Home Office could not cope with the bureaucracy

GETTY Mrs May has been urged to assure the rights of EU workers (file picture)

And trying to use National Insurance numbers would prove no more fruitful, according to the researchers, because millions of EU workers who have since returned home still hold them, whilst any Europeans in Britain who do not work do not. They wrote: “By removing rights retroactively, the UK would make many EU workers either return home or continue to work illegally. Most would probably move to their home country or another EU member-state. “But others would move into the black economy. They would not pay taxes, and they would be more likely to be exploited by employers.” Citing research by the independent Migration Observatory they argued that, because Britain does not have a database of EU nationals living in the country, the process of deportations would take around 140 years to complete.

This will obviously cause domestic political problems for Theresa May Centre for European Research

Mrs May has come under fire from political opponents, including leading Brexiteers, for refusing to guarantee the rights of European citizens to continue living and working in Britain after the country leaves the EU. The PM insists she will not make a formal pledge on EU citizens’ rights in the UK until she secures a similar guarantee from European leaders, saying that doing so would weaken her negotiating hand. Meanwhile her new Brexit minister, David Davis, has suggested the Government may set a “cut-off date” before which arrivals from the EU have to arrive in Britain to be guaranteed the right to stay. The researchers say the bureaucratic nightmare involved in tracking down EU migrants after decades of free movement will provide a serious headache for Mrs May, who has promised to respect the Brexit vote by getting tough on migration.

During a recent visit to Germany the PM said that “sustainable levels” of immigration are in the tens of thousands and pledged to scrap the principle of free movement under which all EU migrants have moved to Britain. She said: “The overwhelming message from the Brexit vote was the importance of bringing some control into free movement of people from the EU into the UK, so that’s another factor we will be looking at in relation to net migration for the foreseeable future.” A number of leading politicians and commentators have warned that it would be suicide for the new Prime Minister to attempt to backslide on the issue of EU immigration. But the CER exerts believe that, as the challenges of Brexit become clearer, the practicalities of trying to retrospectively track down the approximately three million EU citizens living in the UK.

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