To expect to have the opportunity to vote in the EU referendum

[Mistigri]

I'm British living abroad in the EU. As things stand I don't expect to get a vote in the EU referendum - the Tory right will fiercely resist enfranchising both 16 and 17 year olds, and expats.

AIBU to believe that the estimated 2-3 million British people who have taken advantage of free movement within the EU should get the right to vote on this issue?

(I don't have or expect a vote in general elections btw, as a general rule I don't believe that people who are tax-resident elsewhere should have the right to choose a government that doesn't affect them directly.)

No - You chose to go elsewhere and pay tax in a foreign country.

I don't expect to get a vote. I've been gone longer than I lived in my own country. So it would be pushing my luck. But... chose feels like the wrong word.

I was instructed by the government to get on my bike. I pedalled my little socks off as requested. It was all Auf Wiedersehen Pet, not "come to a screetching halt at national boarders if opportunity hasn't knocked by the time you hit Dover".

I didn't feel like I had much choice in the matter when my choices were:

-the dole+ never ending queues at the DHSS, like some kind of pre-death decent into a circle that Dante overlooked.

or

-get on a plane for the first time in my life and kid myself that a single day trip to Calais was good preperation for emigration to Asia
(PSA- I do not recommend a 16 hour flight for your virgin lift off)

The message I received from my nation was damned if you don't seek an opportunity and doubly damned if you turn one down cos you have to move to take it you idle bastard.

If that was a misinterpretation on my part, well I'm sure Mr. Tebbit has an email address by now, we can ask him to clarify.

I didn't so much as choose to pay taxes in another country as avoid Britons paying taxes to support me.

There is no shortage of Britons in the EU who have done exactly the same as me, just more recently. And for this grave offence you would deny them a voice in a referendum which will decide if they are at risk of having to uproot their entire lives (again) or not.

That doesn't exactly scream of a desire for a fair and democratic vote.

i know plenty of people in the uk who are expats/immigrants. i wouldnt and have never called them either. it seems an odd conversation to have?

Unless I was dreaming when I read it, the Conservative manefesto promised to give the vote (I assume in GEs) to all British "ex-pats" no matter how long they had been out of the country.

The Conservatives are scrapping the 15 year rule.

I don't expect to get a say in a general election (and actually I'd go much further than the present 15 year cut-off, and say that anyone who is tax-resident outside the UK, including non-doms and rich tax dodgers, should not be entitled to vote for a government whose primary responsibility is UK fiscal policy).

I certainly do expect to get a say on something that fundamentally affects my situation, as a Briton, in my host country.

i know plenty of people in the uk who are expats/immigrants. i wouldnt and have never called them either. it seems an odd conversation to have?
That sounds a little like the stance of "I never see or talk about race because it's rude/I'm colourblind". Very nice of you but a little self-deluding (of course you notice race and people's national origin, and you're leaving the debate to those that see race and immigration negatively)

My mother is an immigrant. I am proud of what she's done for Britain. She came after meeting my dad in a third country, so came to get married, no question of temporary expat status. She only took out UK citizenship after retiring because my brother lives in another EU country so she wants to be free to spend longer periods there.

My children are also immigrants - both born in the same country as my mother, we adopted them there and they came to the UK on immigrant visas.

If my parents had met now it's highly unlikely they would have been allowed to live together in the UK as my dad's job then is pretty poorly paid despite requiring high level qualifications.

i dunno it just doesnt come up that way. we might talk about their nationality/experience living abroad but i dont think i would ever/have ever said 'as an immigrant'. maybe lots of other people do? just sounds odd to me. i'd say 'as a german' or something along those lines anyway.
definitely not 'expat' unless they were sent to uk temporarily on contract, which noone i now know is. its odd to call, say, aussies in the uk 'expats' imo, unless they are working for an internat/aussie company on a temp contract

then again, i definitely dont think all those uk pensioners/low wage tax dodgers in spain are expats either

if you live in london or similar i guess you might meet expats.

me again

thinking about it, i would call the brits in spain 'expats' as a shorter word than 'emigrants', but i dont expect them, living permanently in spain as their home, to think of themselves as expats. they are immigrants when in spain and talking about themselves

i've been both and more
lived temp in oz = backpacker
lived in europe, loved it, found own job on local rates, settled in community, local friends = immigrant to that country
lived in middle east, send there for job, uk package, compound lifestyle, no rights in that country,,would be repatriated if it all went tits up (and was repatriated) = expat

But would you call a family from the EU living here and with their children in school here "expats because it's shorter than immigrants"? If not why not? If you talk about their nationality or language our culture what term do you use? What if they are naturalised British?

I feel we need to be positive about these terms as generally they are only used negatively. People look at me oddly when I say I have immigrant children but some parties would have denied DS life saving treatment, and my mum care in pregnancy and childbirth, as they wouldn't have been in the country three years yet. I need people to be aware that they are talking about my lovely family when they talk about immigrants.

You probably have different people in your life who would be affected. Maybe your doctor or nurse, maybe your DC's school friend or teacher. As a PP said, we need to make it plain immigrants are a positive influence in Britain as that paranoia seems to be the main thing driving those who want to leave the EU.

If the UK voted to leave the EU I would suspect that anyone already living in the UK from the EU, and vice versa, would retain their residency/work rights. So nobody is going to have to come back to the UK after 20 years living in say Italy or Germany. In fact I think if there were a "leave" vote, there would be scope for current UK residents to jump ship to an EU country before the UK left the EU - it's not going to happen overnight. I would certainly consider it.

In any event, "the UK" won't vote to leave. England might (hopefully not). Scotland and Wales (and Northern Ireland) won't. And that will open up a whole new can of worms.

Every so often my MIL makes a sarky comment about uncontrolled immigration completely forgetting that I am one of 400k Irish passport holders living in the UK. I love to point it out [evil]

Because I am the mother of her grandchildren, white and English speaking, I don't count apparently....

Honestly - membership of the EU brings enormous benefits to this country and it's citizens, at home or abroad. There some very large pro's and cons to membership but mostly I agree with the view that it is a bloated and costly form of government.

The referendum is simply a very expensive way [cost of the referendum plus the campaigns etc] of allowing the Tories to renegotiate some of the terms of membership and how the EU bodies are funded with other member states.

What p*sses me off the most is that Nigel Farage gets to shake off the election results and return to his MEP job representing the South East. It's not as though we are sending our top people to represent us in Europe is it???

A PP made a comparison with the Scottish referendum - not quite the same as Scots living in England would not find themselves in an uncertain immigration status if Scotland had voted Yes!

I do think 16-17 year olds should be enfranchised for an EU referendum - they are old enough yo understand the issues and the result will have a huge impact on their future.

At present the right to remain permanently in an EU country does not kick in until you have 5 years of regular residence (ie paid up member of local society filling in tax returns etc). So I think that unless the rules are changed specifically to benefit UK migrants, then those who will have less than 5 years residence in 2017 should be concerned.

I cannot see France for example making an exception for the estimated 800,000 Brits in France, many of whom are retired or otherwise economically inactive, working in the black economy, or earning very small sums from self-employment.

Most EU healthcare systems are contribution based. For anyone who is not making social security contributions, ie the retired in particular, the big stumbling block will be healthcare, assuming reciprocal healthcare agreements are rescinded.

I am also British living elsewhere in the EU. Temporarily in my case, we plan to return to the UK within 5-10 years. British people who are taking advantage of freedom of movement within the EU have a huge interest in the outcome of the referendum, so I think should be entitled to vote. The advantage of having a simple rule of if you get to vote in tGeneral election you get to vote in the referendum is that then the Tory right don't have to worry about non Brits in Britain voting.

its odd to call, say, aussies in the uk 'expats' imo, unless they are working for an internat/aussie company on a temp contract

You'd think - it's surprising how many people do.

There is a whole section of the Telegraph website called Telegraph Expat - which certainly doesn't draw a distinction between those who have left temporarily and those who've gone for good.

But as others have said - we don't refer to Poles who are here temporarily as Polish expats, generally.

the telegraph is just weird full stop

no, what i mean is, there are 2 main definitions for expat

what do polish people (for example) in poland call poles who live in the uk? and what do they call foreigners who live in poland? i dont know, but i imagine it is not the same word. because one word describes those who have left (emigrants) and one those who have moved in (immigrants)

in english we have chosen to use the broader term 'expat' instead of 'emigrant' to talk about 'brits abroad'. i guess because it is a bit shorter. maybe we should use 'emigrant' again?

expat also has a wider meaning which applies to any nationality, sent abroad short term, paid for by their company, probably not integrating all that much, well paid usually. could be indian, chinese, american, indonesian. the well paid is probably part of it tbh but not the nationality. our expat community was singaporean, norwegian, hong kong chinese, lots of americans, few brits. its a culture all of its own and you meet the same people in different countries often after a while

there arent all that many polish expats are there (definition 2)?
of course they can call themselves expats (definition 1) although they probably use the polish equivalent word mostly, or they can join the polish expat forum
polishexpats.org.uk/

Lots of EU citizens living in the UK are here for very short periods, don't intend to stay, and just work to earn some money and send it back, while having a fairly "adult" circle of friends, celebrating home-country holidays, eating in home-country restaurants...

More or less the same as "expats" from the UK who are sent abroad by their company. It's just that the EU citizens work for a UK organisation/themselves.

What of those who are sent abroad by a company, but then move to a job with a local company (but still mainly speak English, eat British food and if they have DCs send them to British schools)? Are they expats (culturally)? Or immigrants (stayed beyond first contract)? Or economic migrants (went over for work)?

But British people also use 'expat' to describe eg Americans and Australians who live in Britain. But don't generally use the same language about Poles or Romanians.

I'm talking about how British people refer to both their own citizens abroad and foreign citizens here - and how the latter group are described has some quite nasty undertones of 'good immigrants' and 'bad immigrants'.

and how the latter group are described has some quite nasty undertones of 'good immigrants' and 'bad immigrants'

This graphic in this one is worth a look. British got the number 2 spot. Which considering our population, is no small feat. The contrast between the adjectives associated with each terms is notable.

linguisticpulse.com/2015/03/15/expats-and-immigrants-how-we-talk-about-human-migration/

Thanks AiCee - that is interesting (and sobering).

Interesting article and right on the mark.

Over the years I've heard some choice remarks about scrounging immigrants who can't be bothered to learn English - from people who happily claim benefits here and speak just about enough French to order a beer in a bar...

there seems to have been a massive amount of scaremongering on mumsnet about this since the election.

I was prompted to do a bit of internet research after the first thread I read and I couldn't find anything supporting any of the threatened repatriation of 1million (or whatever) besides if all the Brits in continental Europe are forced to move back won't all the continental europeans here be forced to move back too? So there will be lots of jobs/houses/school places to go round surely?

What I found about trade tariffs seemed to suggest that the UK would be making a much lower contribution than we do currently.

How to Switzerland Norway etc manage it?

Jassy

I can see using corpora to analyse the distinctions between the 2 terms becoming ever more frequent and a more prominent part of the debate.

Switzerland and Norway are in the EEA. Which mean they are subject to almost all EU rules (including the four freedoms - and that means freedom of movement) without any influence over setting those rules.

You hear an awful lot of people saying 'we just want to control immigration, etc, we could be like Norway and Switzerland', ignoring the fact that we couldn't be 'like Norway and Switzerland' without agreeing to freedom of movement.