The deadline for applications to the EU settlement scheme passed yesterday. The mechanism is part of a huge and almost entirely overlooked shift in the politics of immigration. That shift has seen a country that left the EU partly because of concerns about immigration adopt migration policies that are strikingly open and, indeed, potentially more permissive than the ones we had before Brexit.
That might seem a contentious claim, given regular headlines about Home Office brutality towards illegal migrants. But such cases are a fraction of overall migration. When it comes to the majority of foreign nationals in Britain, the government approach is often — quietly — rather liberal.
Under the scheme, any EU national who can prove they have been in the UK for
