I guess this makes sense when you consider that there's an open border with Ireland. Though you'd think that the UK and Ireland could get together to track exits...
To return, you'd walk past a man at Heathrow who was invariably reading the paper. He had his feet up on the desk. You were walking at a clip, passport held aloft, photo page ostensibly open towards him.
That was it. Immigrated.
I read on a sign “travellers from Europe this way” and I thought ok my flight came from Spain I’m going that way … when I saw I was out of the airport with no immigration whatsoever
In hindsight it obviously meant if you’re European (which I’m not), I was in shock how easy someone could get in the UK !
What you’re describing sounds like it was the customs check. Pre-brexit, if you were arriving from the EU, then there was no customs check since we were all part of the same customs union.
The usual flow is
immigration check -> baggage collection -> customs check
I am not a British or EU citizen
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2024/nov/28/keir-...
It seems to be a bipartisan thing in the UK to recognize that the electorate really doesn’t want immigration, and then not to fulfill the will of the electorate. Instead, the politicians use that will to accomplish unrelated goals like imposing a national digital ID.
Is that the case or is there just a significant minority that cares and the rest are happy enough as things are and would get mad if there was change - thus making their approach rational: get the votes of those who care but don't do anything because then you will be voted out next term.
I don't know myself, but this is something that I've wondered about a lot of issues that I care about where nothing happens. (I've long been on the side of more immigration)
But of course it's never going to be enough for the noisily anti-immigration lot.
Usually, it's not an "inner wish" of the electorate, but the electorate gets manipulated to feel that way by mass media, especially tabloids. Outrage sells, after all, especially when it can be laced to make it more effective.
The problem at the core is that immigration is vital for societies, especially the low-pay-hard-labor segment. Has the UK found a replacement for Ukrainian and Polish farm workers yet [1]?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/15/pounds-6...
As you say, the tabloids sell what people want to read. Who's manipulating whom?
> The problem at the core is that immigration is vital for societies, especially the low-pay-hard-labor segment. Has the UK found a replacement for Ukrainian and Polish farm workers yet [1]?
Immigration is also good for the would be immigrants.
Though if you are only interested in cheap labour (and giving foreigners jobs which are better than what they can get at home), you can run a guest worker programmer without giving them the right to stay. Singapore has a few successful programmes like that.
Ie you can have cheap labour without permanent immigration.
I'm in favour of open borders; but if for political reasons you can't have permanent immigration, guest worker programmes are better than completely closed borders.
"We" surely have pretty good information about number of adults in the UK, and if the security services are worth their salt we know their names and associations.
Heck, the main supermarkets can probably tell you within a percent or two what the live demographics of the country are.
By and large, it's a feature, not a bug, that the government isn't sharing all the information it has between its various parts.
Eg GCHQ has lots of information it has (ostensibly) for keeping the country safe, but that doesn't mean that the prosecution in a criminal case should get access to all the same information.
Of course, that's a bit inefficient and duplicates efforts. But such is a price for restrained government.
Weren't the other borders with the Schengen area open, too? Eg if you take a small boat from England to Denmark, no one needed to check anything.
In the UK there's no exit checks. The only information they have is that you booked a flight. This is "Advance Passenger Information" which all airlines are legally required to submit. They don't know if you've actually boarded the flight, they just assume that if you booked a flight that it means you left the country.
The exit check doesn't tell them that you've come back, they know that already unless you cross the land border. But it does tell them that you truly left and stop the guesswork.
This was centuries before the UK. The Normans came to Ireland by invitation of Macmurphy, King of Leinster, to help him restore his power, in exchange for promises of territory. This barely counts as a conquest CB, but with certainty not as an invasion.
Strangely, no 'English' people have ruled England since the latter Norman invasion.
Scotland and Wales often try to pretend they weren't part of the Empire and its horrors - in reality their were nobles/toffs/rich nobs from all across GB (at least) doing their part. Barely any of our ancestors were involved in any way other than servitude.
(My family are from both sides of the Anglo-Irish conflicts.)
The Common Travel Area's origins are in the the period 1923-1925[0], although it wasn't called that back then...
