Brexit is surely delayed. Rumours coming out of 10 Downing Street are that Article 50 might only be invoked in May 2017, after the French and German elections. After all, Theresa May would want to know who she is dealing with before walking into the European Union offices to talk business. If that happens, then Britain will only leave the EU in 2019. That’s practically three years away.
But even three years doesn’t seem to be a long time for the 20,000-odd Goans who now reside in Britain on Portuguese passports. Only recently, MP for Leicester East, Keith Vaz expressed uncertainty over their futures. This doesn’t bode well for the thousands of Goans who need to be able to cement their futures with houses, investments and jobs. Those who have been living in the UK for more than five years, and that number is large, will not really be affected. It’s only those who have been there for less than five years that need to ponder their futures and wonder if they would need to go to Portugal, or elsewhere in the EU and work and live. One big problem is the issue of language.
The road to England via Portugal is well-documented. Apply for a Portuguese passport in Goa, travel to the UK and avail of the EU’s free flow of labour laws to get a job in an English speaking nation. For thousands of Goans, learning Portuguese or any other language like French and German is a tedious task. But that was back then, much before the UK Independence Party (UKIP) started their anti-EU movement. Now the borders of Britain are closed, for the most part.
Some things are certain. As Portuguese passport holders, those 20,000 odd Goans are EU citizens. They are not alone. According to Keith Vaz, there are around 3.1 million EU citizens living in the UK. The EU is not going to allow their citizens to be thrown out unceremoniously, especially not while over one million Britishers live elsewhere around the EU.
This is where the Goan community in Britain needs to come together. Along with their representatives like Keith Vaz, Rabi Martins and others, they need to remind the government that they are an integral part of the British economy and therefore need to not face this uncertainty. No doubt, Britain will give them a fighting chance of getting back into the country by way of newly written immigration laws. Perhaps they’ll have to undergo immigration procedures once again, perhaps they’ll be allowed to stay by virtue of them having been there when the Brexit vote was taking place. But when everything is up in the air, no one can really function. The British government owes it to these 20,000 Goans, and many others who face the same problem, some sort of clarity.
