Do you really want us to leave...

[guest2013]

I'm European.
Last night I stupidly allowed myself to rise to someone telling me to go back to where I came from.. it ended up with about 6 people arguing with me and they were adamant that foreigners are to blame for the country's problems.
It's absolutely shook me to my core.. I feel very strange today, I've never, in my 8 years here had any negative comments. Lucky I suppose.
Are people who think this way unreasonable? Are there any exceptions where immigrants are a negative thing?
Do any of you think this way?
I'm not looking to carry on arguing but this is a safe way to discuss and I would respect your opinion.
Thanks

I'm British, but spent 15 years in France (taking advantage of their system I suppose - as I attended school and university for most of that time) and I'm now back in the UK with my French husband. DH is applying for British citizenship, but we're also thinking about moving back to France - the problem being that I don't have French citizenship.

A lot of my colleagues - I'm an MFL teacher - are thinking about moving back to France/Germany/Spain as well, as are some friends from other departments, such as my German colleague who teaches science. I'm sure some people will celebrate us leaving... until they realise that the school won't work without us.

I'm another who doesn't want you to leave!

Without 'immigrants' we would have lost our NHS, schools and many other things years ago!! We don't have the members of society willing to do jobs immigrants do (hence why they're on benefits or other and immigrants are employed instead) and we don't have enough members of our own country willing to take on the rigorous study and time required to become doctors or similar and nurses.

All this stuff about the unelected EU government drives me nuts. What did you think the European parliamentary elections were about? They happen every five years, they're publicised just like other elections, schools and church halls are closed to be used as polling stations, posters go up all over the place, there are party political broadcasts and lots of news coverage - did it all pass you by?

What about news coverage of EU summits when the leaders of every EU country get together to decide on policy? Leaders who are elected in their own country.

EU commissioners - nominated by EU governments, approved by the EU parliament, which is elected by citizens of EU countries.

The EU is not perfect, obviously, but it's not an unelected dictatorship either.

The EU Government IS elected. Our prime minister, on the other hand.....

Next time the far Right vote the same way as you maybe you'll stop and think about the reason why.
Brexiters voted for something that hadnt been defined! Then made all sorts of accusations about 'Remoaners', including that we were scaremongering.

It's foolish wrong to blame "them foreigners" for everything that is bad with the country, BUT it is equally foolish and wrong to immediately dismiss anyone who is concerned about immigration as a racist (which I'm not saying the OP is doing, by the way).

What happened to the OP sounds offensive and shouldn't happen. But rather than just say the people who did it were just a bunch of racists, bigots, Nazis or whatever, will not do anything to change the views of those people. Changing their minds is surely what we want?

Throughout history people have blamed "them foreigners" for whatever problems their country faced at the time. It is right to challenge people on these views, but it is wrong to deny that whatever problems people blame on foreigners do not actually exist. The problems do exist, it's just that perhaps people are laying the blame in the wrong place.

Find out why people are blaming immigrants. Why do they think that they are taking our jobs/benefits/whatever? Above all, show them - with real, practical examples - why these people are actually better off because of the relaxed attitude to immigration. Explain to them why we are better off as a country and why they are better of as individuals because of the (admittedly huge) number of immigrants we've had over the years.

People who want to "kick 'em out" or "send 'em back" will not be persuaded by ideals like "free movement" or anything like that - unlike you, they do not want to live in a world where anyone can live anywhere (of course, that's not the world we live in either). They need to be persuaded by tangible benefits of immigration. Things that they can actually see and feel - especially the roof above their head, the job they work in, the money in their pocket. Why are these things better for them with immigration?

If you can come up with a reasonable argument to answer this last question, you will be able to persuade an awful lot of people. There are racists who will always be racist, but there are many more people who are not anti-immigration on principle - they just want it to be demonstrably better for them personally.

If we can't answer this question and show the likes of the people who started on the OP why they are better off because of immigration, we really can't begrudge them their opinion. And certainly we can't expect to change it.

But I do agree we need controlled immigration and should be a bit more selective about who we allow to come and settle here. I dont agree with throwing out people who are already living here, and contributing to the economy, but then again I really don't believe that will happen. Nor has the Government ever suggested that this will happen. It's really just scaremongering tactics by the media and Remainers.

How do you explain this, then? Home Office rejects application for British citizenship from woman married to UK citizen with two UK children who has lived in the UK for 24 years and in its rejection letter says As you appear to have no alternative basis of stay in the United Kingdom you should now make arrangements to leave.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/28/dutch-woman-with-two-british-children-told-to-leave-uk-after-24-years

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/29/home-office-reform-permanent-residency-application-process-eu-nationals

This is obvious incompetence from the Home Office, but if the government really cared about this issue it would have made adequate preparations and ensured that staff were properly trained to deal with the entirely predictable surge in applications for UK citizenship from nationals of other EU countries who live here.

The place my OH works is very immigrant heavy..if they were to 'go back to where they came from' the company would move production overseas.

I would imagine there are firms up and down the country in similar positions. The mouthy lot that seem now to be more brazen in their views since Brexit like my Mother dont seem to be able to comprehend this

I'm sorry that you went to a party with a bunch of people who turned out to be such bigots. I'm sorry you feel less welcome than you used to. Im sorry it is so hard to tell decent people from idiots these days. I'm sorry people voted like they did...

I don't want you to leave, but then I'm an immigrant myself. My British dh is so dismayed but what is happening here now that HE wants to leave though!

The UK university sector is going to be hit very hard indeed.

• No more funding for research from the EU, and that's been massive.

• Huge decline in students from the rest of the EU because their fees will go up to the level of non-EU students (about three times what UK and other EU students are charged now). With the loss of those students comes the loss of all the money they spend while they study here and the contribution they make when they stay on here to work after graduating, and the ties it creates between the UK and their home countries.

• Losing staff members who are EU nationals because they can't get permission to remain in the UK or because they don't feel welcome any more and go somewhere with a more enlightened attitude.

Incredibly short-sighted. The UK's universities are absolutely vital for our economy and for the health of our society.

I don't understand how you can have voted Leave because you don't like big business and millionaires getting everything they want, or because you believed that money we send to the EU could instead be used for the NHS. We have a Tory government. They like big business and millionaires and they want to destroy the NHS. How did you think giving them more power than they already had would be a good thing?

The Brexit crew made their contempt for experts and expertise very clear, Gasp, so I guess they won't be too bothered if our fantastic HE institutions are hit hard.

As for the impact on our economy, don't worry about it. We'll just keep telling everyone that the infamous £350 million that we would otherwise have paid into the EU will now stay in the UK, so it will all be ok.

We don't yet know what the Government plans to do about current EU nationals here but I very much hope it will be to say to those already living and working here that they are welcome to remain. We need their skills and I think it would be short sighted, not to say stupid, to turf those people out, my friends among them.

Someone mentioned France being less inclined to hold back the migrant workers in their country clamoring at our borders. I doubt it would be a surprise to anyone if that happened, it certainly wouldn't be to me, which is why we need control of our borders so they can be sent back.

I see some Remainers on here have already tried to turn it into a general 'we hate Brexit and/or knock the ignorant, racist, xenophobic Leavers' thread. If you want to do that, there are plenty of similar mind on the EU Referendum board - why not join them?

PS No-one I know who voted Leave believed the multi-million injection into the NHS per day nonsense. So not shocked nor disappointed, just bemused that someone drags it up on every bloody thread ad nauseam.

No one in my family, no one I know thinks this way; we are a mix of Remainers and Brexiters and not one of them thinks immigrants are anything but a boon to our society. Please stay.

No-one I know who voted Leave believed the multi-million injection into the NHS per day nonsense. So not shocked nor disappointed, just bemused that someone drags it up on every bloody thread ad nauseam.

I live in London and my extended family are in Scotland. I don't know anyone who admits to having voted Leave, so I have no idea what the motives of most Leave voters were. However, it seems odd that the Leave campaign figureheads would have made such a big deal of that claim if they didn't expect anyone to be persuaded by it.

But of course we are now in a post-fact world. I do feel very much as if I've fallen through the rabbit hole. Trump or pro-Brexiteers make some ludicrous claim with no factual basis at all. Others point out the errors of fact. Supporters of T/B say none of that matters, they aren't voting for T/B because of these factually inaccurate claims. So why are they voting that way? What else would you base your decision on other than the facts?

Well, in answer to your title, not the op details, but I actually think that if we do actually end up leaving, I suspect that things will be ok. Life will continue, we will trade, people will come here to work, uk citizens will take jobs abroad, etc.
I don't have a 'end of the world is nigh' view if it.

I don't have a 'end of the world is nigh' view if it

Neither do I, but then I'm still not convinced it's going to happen at all

It amazes me that nobody's made more of the upcoming supreme court decision about whether parliament will have to vote on Article 50. If that happens, does anyone else wonder whether they - with so many snouts firmly in the EU trough - will delay it until the end of time??

I see some Remainers on here have already tried to turn it into a general 'we hate Brexit and/or knock the ignorant, racist, xenophobic Leavers' thread

Well said Rorty

I think people going down the "Everyone who voted leave voted for this" should really consider whether bigotry and racism is effectively tackled by trying to shoehorn 37% of the electorate into the racist pot, or by all non-racists (of whatever party and however they voted in the referendum)standing together in condemning racism and making clear that, as before the referendum, it is not acceptable in our society.

You don't fight racism by telling people it is a mainstream view.

The leavers really don't care about HE, they can't do. Which is a shame because we clearly need education for all, not just those that can afford it.

I'm as English as they come. Don't think I've got any foreign-born antecedents for several generations.

I'm glad you're here, OP. I like having people from other countries here. Whenever I hear other languages spoken, I feel pleased and proud that we have such a great country that others want to come and help make it even better. And as every reliable set of figures tells us, we benefit far more from immigration than it ever costs us. Sorry you had a bad experience, I'm sure those people are in a real minority.

Racism is certainly not tolerated by any Leaver I know. Some of them are children of immigrants, there are a wide range of ethnicities and religions amongst the Leavers I know. Not one believed the spin from twat Farage. All lefties. All educated. All employed. No turkeys voting for Christmas. I know plenty of remainers who say they are not racist, but are orientalist at best.

I love living in the UK and appreciating the richness that people from other countries bring to our culture when they move here. Please stay. Immigrants over racists every day of the week.

If I tell the Danes who would never say anything like that around me, they make excuses for their countrymen and say it's just a minority or say that it's just idiots or say they meant the "other" immigrants.

Ha, Wonderflonium. This really does seem to be an extra special Danish skill they seem to have learned in school. I've yet to encounter anything quite like it anywhere else. It's probably in some way connected to the phenomenon of at least some Danish science textbooks (for example) dedicating half or full pages scattered throughout the books to random Danish scientists but rarely any to anyone else, presumably so Danes grow up thinking their tiny country made far greater a mark on the world than it did. At least English books and museums seem to attempt to focus on where the interesting/significant contributions are, rather than pushing exclusively English scientists etc. on us.

That is not, of course, to minimise the English sense of superiority in relation to much of the rest of the world, which certainly seems somewhat more deluded once you get out and about, but yeah.

I wonder if anyone's coined the word 'Dansplaining' yet.

Gaspodethewonderdog; I don't get the relevance of your post? You provide a link to the Guardian about a story of a Dutch citizen living in the U.K. who has received a letter telling her to make arrangements to leave due to a failed residency application. But towards the end of the protracted tale we find out the reason is not due to Brexit or proposed changes, but is due to the Home Office asking for documentation and passport which the applicant didn't provide. The situation would have also happened pre Brexit vote. Whilst you say the Home Office acted incompetently, who knows whether they did or didn't? Sounds like both sides acted with a little bit of incompetence TBH.