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How will BREXIT affect the immigrants in UK and Poland. [1114]
chaotic - millions of people in legal limbo, huge holdups at the border, a further crash in the pound
Well, I'm quite knowledgable about border issues. Let's talk specifically about Dover and the Channel Tunnel, because it's easiest to understand. Right now, there's an agreement in place for immigration/police checks to take place on departure rather than on arrival. Nothing will change there, because this is an Anglo-French agreement outside of the European Union structures. However, the agreement (officially the Sangatte Protocol) - does not mention anything about Customs controls, because they had already been abolished by the time the agreement was signed into law by the UK and France in 1993. What controls do exist are conducted on arrival, rather than on departure.
So, Brexit happens, and so Customs controls are introduced as the UK is now outside the Customs Union. Suddenly, you're going to have a huge amount of freight facing controls in both Dover and Calais - while there's room for those controls at Eurotunnel, there's no room in Calais or Dover for them. The whole system in those two ports revolves getting trucks in and onto ferries as quickly as possible, with Customs checks only being intelligence-led rather than systematic. What will happen? Chaos. There's no room in either Calais or Dover to accommodate all the trucks awaiting Customs controls, and the only realistic solution for the UK is to simply do random checks on trucks, as now. As there's no room in Calais, then trucks will have to queue in the UK until there's space - which means more chaos.
