June 23, 2016, will go down in history as the day UK decided to leave European Union (EU) or more popularly, as the events are being cumulatively called, “Brexit”. On this day, a referendum was held to decide whether the UK should remain or leave the EU. Around about 30 million people participated in the voting process. Leave trumped remain by 51.9% to 48.1%. This was a huge step even in the history of EU as this was the first time a member country had decided to exit from the political and economic partnership. March 29, 2017, was the day when Prime Minister Theresa May officially kick-started the Brexit process.

Brexit was invoked essentially by the virtue of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. This provision primarily gives the EU and the exiting country a time period of two years to decide and settle on the terms of the split. So technically, Brexit will be official on March 29, 2019. But the question is why did UK decide to exit EU? There were three primary factors leading up to this decision; first was EU’s unstable economic status. The UK is a huge market for trading because of which it felt threatened by the EU’s financial situation. Since the European debt crisis, the unemployment rate in southern Europe had gone up by 20%, which was a cause of concern for the UK because it believed that the after effects would be felt by the country as well. Secondly, the UK, along with the entire world, was realizing feelings of nationalism. The UK wanted to go sovereign and break off ties with the EU to devise its national directives at its own terms. And the third factor was that the UK wanted to get rid of political superiority that had existed in the country Brexit was an outcome of a referendum and in the larger public opinion it was derived that the people did not want political motivations to regulate their system prospectively.

There are several debates on the kind of consequences this step will reflect in the long run but a series of alterations can be predicted in terms of immigration. As of today, as per the internal operations of EU, the EU nations are allowed free movement of goods, capital, services, and people in the UK. This essentially means that EU nationals have no restrictions (per se) to exit or enter the country while others have to go through an extensive visa process to do the same. Changes will be amended in the immigration sector of the UK and the free movement of EU nationals will be retracted as a matter of fact since the treaty obligations won’t apply to the UK anymore. But what these changes will be, will not be known until Brexit becomes official on March 29, 2019. We recommend keeping an eye out for news on The Guardian’s Brexit watch.

The SmartMove2UK (a unit of SM immigration) is a legal firm specializing in immigration law. As immigration lawyers, we feel obliged to convey explanations of global political matters in a language simple enough to understand for all. Stay connected with us for more explanations about Brexit related topics, and more.