NICOLA Sturgeon has hit out at Theresa May’s “grotesque” immigration policies and called for powers over migration to be devolved to Holyrood.
Earlier this week the Prime Minister binned the £65 fee for EU citizens living in the UK applying for “settled status” after Brexit.
While Sturgeon welcomed this, she said it was wrong that Europeans who had made their home in Scotland were being asked to apply to remain here.
Responding to a question from Labour’s Pauline McNeill, the First Minister said: “We’re very clear we want EU citizens to stay in Scotland.
“I don’t think there should be a requirement for people who already have their home in Scotland to apply for the right to stay here, I think that is grotesque.”
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The Prime Minister’s approach to “this and to migration more generally makes it all the more clear why it’s time for this Parliament to have powers over immigration,” Sturgeon argued.
“From the day after the Brexit referendum, I have been at pains to say to EU citizens that they are welcome here, this is their home and that we want them to stay.
“I regret deeply that people who have built their homes here, who consider this to be their home as much as I do or any of us in this chamber do, are being made to apply for the right to stay here.
She added: “I think that is awful and I can’t begin to imagine how that makes an EU national feel.
“In Scotland, we need people to want to come and live here and work here and study here. We need to grow our working-age population.
“So as well as what the UK Government is doing being wrong in principle, it’s practically damaging for Scotland and that’s why the sooner we get these matters into our own hands and are able to take decisions here in Scotland, rather than have them taken in Westminster, the better for all of us”.
McNeill said the UK Government hadn’t recognised “the rejection that those EU citizens feel”.
Meanwhile, Scottish Brexit Secretary Michael Russell said he trusts Sturgeon on the timing of another Scottish referendum.
The SNP leader is coming under growing pressure from some in her party to call for indyref2 sooner rather than later.
Earlier this week, Western Isles MP Angus MacNeil has argued that it is time for calls for a fresh independence vote “to come to fore”.
However, SNP MEP Alyn Smith said supporters of holding another independence vote in the near future should “ca’canny”.
Russell told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme that “everybody will have an opinion” about the timing of a possible second referendum.
He added: “There are clearly many interests to be taken into account and I absolutely trust the First Minister’s judgment on these things.”
Sturgeon has already pledged to set out her views on this in a “matter of weeks”. But with the UK facing a Brexit “crisis” which he said was “getting considerably worse”, Russell said Scots should “look to ourselves and our own future”.
He added: “It is absolutely the right moment to say that these are very, very serious concerns we are facing and the people of Scotland have the right to say ‘Do we have to go through this? It is something that we did not vote for’.
“That is the truth at the heart of this. Scotland did not vote for Brexit, we’ve spent two-and-a-half years trying to negotiate the best possible outcome of this, compromising all the way, and we are incredibly within weeks of the supposed end date without anything firm in place.
“Now the people of Scotland have the right to say ‘That is unacceptable, that is damaging and we must look to ourselves and our own future’.”
Russell also dismissed No 10’s most recent invite to include Scotland in Brexit talks as “hollow”.
Meanwhile, BBC Scotland revealed details of the Scottish Government’s contingency planning for a no-deal Brexit.
The leaked paper warned of public disorder, reduced food supplies and disruption to transport.
It said Police Scotland needed to plan “for a period of potential significant disruption following EU exit, whether for a deal or no-deal scenario”.
It went on to say that although UK agriculture could produce “enough nutritious food for the population” post-Brexit there would be “less choice for consumers”.
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