EUROPEAN UNION migrants should be banned from Britain unless they have a job lined up, Theresa May has demanded.
Blaming a “broken European migration system” for the migrants crisis, the home secretary called on EU leaders to tear up the rules on freedom of movement which allow migrants to travel freely in search of work or benefits.
Writing in The Sunday Times, May also questioned the existence of the Schengen agreement — Europe’s “no borders” policy — saying it had led to the deaths of migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war and placed people at the mercy of people traffickers.
She also signalled that she would lead a cross-Whitehall crackdown this autumn to kick out foreign students at the end of their courses unless they have graduate-level jobs to go to, in a new attempt to drive down numbers.
May said it was time to “break the link” between studying in Britain and the right to stay on afterwards.
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Her intervention comes after figures last week revealed net migration hit 330,000 last year, the worst figure on record, despite a Tory pledge to reduce the number to the “tens of thousands”.
May admitted the numbers were “far too high” and “simply unsustainable” but said it would be “defeatist and wrong” not to seek to control migration.
With net migration to Britain from within the EU having more than doubled since 2010, May said EU rules were “the biggest single factor preventing us from meeting our objective”.
She writes: “When it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for work or claim benefits. Yet last year, four out of 10 EU migrants, 63,000 people, came here with no definite job whatsoever.
“We must take some big decisions, face down powerful interests and reinstate the original principle underlying free movement within the EU.”
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May’s intervention will pile pressure on David Cameron to demand more from Britain’s EU partners as he renegotiates the UK’s relationship with Brussels before a referendum expected in September next year.
Her call to rework freedom of movement rules goes much further than the prime minister’s demand that benefits should be paid only to those who have been working in Britain for four years.
Cameron dropped plans for an emergency brake on EU arrivals after warnings from the German government that the principle of free movement was set in stone.
A senior Home Office official said the influx of refugees from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East had made other European countries open to reform. “There is support from other countries for a directive to restrict free movement in the case of people with criminal records. She’s asking people to reflect on whether more must change,” said the official.
At a security summit in Paris yesterday, May agreed with her French and German counterparts to push for swifter EU work to set up reception centres for migrants in hotspots such as Greece and Italy.
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Changes to freedom of movement would require the agreement of all 28 countries. But the UK could try to control new arrivals by issuing national insurance numbers only to those who can show they had a job.
In words that will anger EU leaders, May said the deaths of migrants should be a “wake-up call” for Brussels that the Schengen agreement, which Britain is not a part of, has “exacerbated” the “tragedies”.
She writes: “Its leaders must consider the consequences of uncontrolled migration — on wages, jobs and social cohesion of the destination nations; on the economies and societies of the rest; and on the lives and welfare of those who seek to come here,” she writes.
A third of Portuguese nurses have left the country; one in five Czech doctors leave to work abroad as soon as they qualify; and 34,000 Romanian children have neither parent in their home country.
Her words will be interpreted by Tory MPs as the home secretary putting down a marker for a future Tory leadership election. She has taken a significantly tougher stance on immigration inside government than George Osborne, the chancellor, and favourite to take over when Cameron leaves.
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The home secretary made clear she will also co-ordinate efforts to get tough with students who stay on after completing a degree. “The right to study in the UK cannot become an automatic right to live here unconditionally,” she says.
Taking on university vice-chancellors, who argue that students are temporary migrants so should not be included in the net migration figure, and that there should be greater freedom for students to settle and apply for jobs, she says: “If we are to attract more students to our world-class universities, we must also break the link between short-term study and permanent settlement in this country.”
Plans to stop the spouses and other dependants of students from working in the UK have been circulated among cabinet ministers and are likely to be published this autumn. About 100,000 student family members have been given visas over the past five years.
May is also finalising an immigration bill, which will be presented to parliament in the next few weeks. It will create a new offence of illegal working that will allow the authorities to seize the wages of those employed unlawfully.
The bill will also feature plans to deport people before they can appeal an immigration case, slap tags on foreign criminals awaiting deportation, and change the burden of proof so that rogue bosses employing illegal immigrants have to show they made the proper checks or face prosecution.
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The home secretary reveals today that new rules to make foreigners pay for NHS treatment, introduced in April, have already raised £50m.
May’s intervention comes as David Cameron prepares for further visits to EU leaders in Spain and Portugal at the end of this week to try to persuade them to back his plan to tighten the rules on migrant benefits.
Ministers will face a fresh challenge on immigration this week when Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, makes his first speech of the political season. He plans to put immigration at the heart of the referendum debate about whether Britain leaves the EU.
The “no” campaign being formed by a cross-party group, including the Conservative aides Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings, has ruled out using immigration as a major argument in the opening salvos of the campaign. But Farage is backing a rival “out” campaign called The Know, funded by the Ukip donor Arron Banks.