On Wed, 25 Jun 2014 07:00:06 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Edinburgh is in the UK. It may not be soon. Should all Scots in London
have their working privileges revoked, if the referendum goes that way?
After all, they'll be no different to an Irishman or a Frenchman or a
Pole. They'll be _foreign_.

Dunno - that's one for the possible national government of Scotland and
the UK to sort out.

In reality I expect the Scots will be treated as defacto EU members even
though that process could take years to formalise.

Don't forget the Common Travel Area. The borders between the UK and the
Republic of Ireland are "open", as they are within Schengen. So, even
ignoring the EU, Irish people have no restriction on movement and
migration within the UK. And that would apply to Scots, too.

At least - it would until an independent Scotland joined the EU and,
inevitably, Schengen, which would mean the UK would need to join Schengen
(even if outside the EU, like Switzerland and Norway), or put passport
control between CTA and Schengen, as at Dover. And if the UK joined
Schengen, we'd not only not have control over Schengen migration, we'd
devolve all control over external migration, too, because Schengen visas
are common...

Well, apart from the forty years the UK's been partaking "testing" it.
Roughly a working lifetime.

We have not had open borders (in any practical sense) for that long and
certainly not with countries that have highly disparate economies.

Common Travel Area with (pre-"Celtic-Tiger") Ireland...? Introduced in
1923, with Irish independence.

You don't get a lot of temporary mobile german or french workers here
because those countries have economic parity with the UK.

London has, IIRC, the sixth largest French population of any city in the
world. Including those in France.