To take Brexit personally?

[Fiep]

I’m preparing to be flamed but I really want to hear views from all sides. Do try to be kind though.

I’m an EU citizen. I’ve lived in the UK for all my adult life and have spent most of that working with NHS patients. I’m a qualified professional and there is a skills shortage - we never manage to fill all our posts.

Most people can’t tell by my accent that I’m from the EU and instead assume I’m from another English-speaking country unless I tel them my name (which sounds foreign) or speak in another language.

Before the referendum I felt the UK was my home. It was the place I’d spent most of my life and I’ve always loved the British humour and quirky way of looking at things.

Nobody ever gave me grief about being foreign and I felt welcome and valued.

Shortly after the referendum, someone verbally abused me on a bus when they overheard me speaking in a European language on the phone. It really upset me. I’m privileged by most measures and I’m white, so I was not used to racist abuse. I now have a baby and struggle to talk to her in my language in public as I feel people are giving me judgemental looks when I’m out and about and speaking “foreign”, especially as I live in a rural place where the majority of shoppers at the big Tesco are White British and I see quite a few Union Jack / St George’s flag tattoos. This denies her the chance to grow up bilingual and I feel guilty about that. I do speak / read / sing to her at home but it’s not enough immersion in the language for it to make a difference.

On the other hand, most of my colleagues in health have always been immigrants too and I struggle to see how the NHS would run if it was just White British staffed.

AIBU to feel really angry about Brexit? To feel it’s just vitriol and wanting the country to be white? To take it personally and to let it affect me in that way? To look around the shops and feel that prejudice has been legitimised?

I’d actually be really keen to hear from Leavers as well as Remainers as I really can’t get my head around how anyone could have thought this was a good idea for something as woolly as “sovereignty” or whatever.

braces self for impact

The people in you artical are Roma travellers. They are not the same as Romanian gypsies. My best primary school friend is Roma, her family have lived in the UK for hundreds of years.

@MaxNormal OMG I SO find myself in these quotes. The person who sad they hate being asked where they’re from as they are concerned there is a correct answer: yes this is me all they way. And people ask ALL the time because my accent isn’t obvious, so people are curious. Unfortunately they are then always surprised to hear the answer as they initially thought I was from a more acceptable country (Australia, US, South Africa or NZ).

I love the idea of Schrödinger’s racist. Thing is you can’t tell if someone’s judging you behind closed doors even if they might be perfectly pleasant to your face (or are wanting to remove your rights and still feel this is “nor racist”).

@Trollstice ah I just googled “Romanian Travellers in UK” after reading your earlier comment as I didn’t know much about this group. I’d be interested to learn more if you have any resources. What interested me was mostly the question why there is such inequality, and how the immigration question plays into it, and what the relationships are in both directions. Because I can understand why you want your kid to have access to education with others who share his language! I guess what I’m querying is whether Brexit will necessarily solve this. Or will it just be other communities taking the places? As the jobs still need doing, right? Someone has to look after the elderly

Yes. But immigration breeds immigration. For every family coming where one adult has a job there needs to be additional dentists, doctor, teachers and eventually carers for those additional people too. So the cycle is never ending.

@Trollstice I understand your point. In what ways do you anticipate Brexit will solve the problem of this skills shortage for now?

What we don't need are any more low skilled migrants. I'm sorry but one person who comes and picks fruit but brings a wife and 3 children does not actually add value to our country. To be blunt, they are an enormous, enormous drain. We need to attract highly skilled migrants. Which we are not doing to do when all our schools are full and hosputaks are over run.

Hospitals, sorry. I have a very annoying dog crawling all over me.

@Trollstice

I'm not sure the fruit farmers agree with you

https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/11/tonnes-of-crops-left-to-rot-as-farms-struggle-to-recruit-eu-workers

You know, to have my children in a school which isn't 25 minutes drive away, that hadn't failed it's OFSTED I can probably live on tinned fruit for the rest of my life.

As a fellow european (not british) it's the union they are leaving not the continent I've not heared or sensed any ill feeling towards a particular European country just the union itself

Indeed. Sod the farmers and their fruit. Let's fly it from South Africa instead.

I think school failing Ofsted would be hard to contribute to a single factor. Many schools with good and excellent ratings are in areas where there is high incidence of EASL among children - I live near one.

Research shows that EAL speakers don't impact outcomes.

www.nuffieldfoundation.org/news/children-whose-second-language-english-do-not-have-negative-impact-education-outcomes-native-en

But this may....

amp.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/31/teachers-poll-reveals-impact-of-cuts-on-english-state-schools

I'm not blaming immigration for the school failing. But I am blaming immigration for the fact the 7 (!) schools closer to us were full. So my children had 12 weeks out of school until places came up at a school 25 minutes drive away.

instagramwilleatitself
Indeed. Sod the farmers and their fruit.

Its difficult to have sympathy for someone that took cheap (sometimes illegal) labour gangs over local people and are now moaning because they don't want to pay more to get their crops picked.

But then this has been discussed before on these threads and at length.

@Trollstice

It's not just fruit picking, it's food processing/manufacturing as well. I visit businesses for work and visited as food manufacturer a couple of weeks ago, the vast majority of the production staff were EU, very few English on the production line. They told me they do cultural days in the canteen, were they have say a Polish day with Polish food and music or a Portuguese day to try to make the staff feel valued. I asked if the staff could bring their children in as well (I jokingly said I should come and bring my children) she said the staff were all young, single, almost none had children here. And before you say it, they pay well above minimum wage, and simply can't recruit locally, they've tried and tried, basically if you want a job there, you can have one, full time, part time, school hours whatever.

Visited another factory a while ago, exactly the same story. As the HR manager said there, "who grows up dreaming of working in a chicken factory".

So your analogy about them bringing their whole family with them is just wrong.

@KenDodd that’s very interesting and mirrors what I have seen in the care sector. Unemployment is actually quite low at the moment and I would guess there are a variety of reasons other than immigrants taking jobs that lead to the remaining people being unemployed.

@Trollstice I understand your frustration and I would also feel frustrated if the only school I could get my kids into was failing. It sounds like your local government fucked up to be honest and they need to address their education provision, not chuck out workers. I wish I had a crystal ball but I somehow really don’t think Brexit will solve this problem for you, particularly if inequality isn’t addressed by the government.

...anyway I’m off to bed before DD wakes for one of her 80000 night wake ups ...

I visit a lot of care homes as well. I remember one I visited just after the referendum, half the care workers were from Europe. The manager told me how bad she'd felt for them on voting day. They'd tried to make going to the polling station a bit of a day out for the residents. The EU care assistants had pushed the residents down to the polling station and the residents had all voted Leave all the while grumbling about too many immigrants. The poor care assistants having to listen to that and getting no vote themselves.

EU citizen here and had I been allowed to vote I would have voted to leave. We need a more poibt based migration system that welcomes people with skills we need from all over not just Europe and I don't see why just because someone is born in europe they should have a greater right to be here then someone from elsewhere. My second issue is it pushes down wages for unskilled work. This is great for the middle class who benefit from cheap services and products or big industries but not so much for people that might do these jobs if the wage was higher. Once companies stop being able to get labour at a rock bottom price maybe they will actually need to increase the wage offer till people are actually willing to apply for them locally. Yes it will push up the price for certain things but these have been too cheap and we need a fairer society for all citizens. Also the way the EU is structured and fuctions goes against my principles. It was meant to be a trading deal only but then extended into laws etc. There are countries outside the EU too that we could have relationships with maybe even better if there are more benefits why should a country just because it is next to us have preferential treatment over the rest of the world. Also there are serious flaws with freedom of movement system.

@Trollstice welcome to mumsnet. You're very eloquent in your opinions, how nice of you to join up and share them.

@redappleandaquamarinebow1987

Thank you for putting that far better than I did.

@AutumnRose1 I thought you argued the points very well yourself but thank you :). I do expect to get flamed as I know it is not a popular opinion online but I hope we can at least all have an adult discussion about this.

I am a leaver, a lexiter I believe I am called. I am a working class woman and have voted labour all my life. Please don’t take it personally. I don’t want you to go. I voted to leave a globalist federation, a system that encourages mass migration creating an endless stream of cheap labour causing low wages for uk working class people. I have a child with special needs. 2 years ago it was impossible to get them into a special school and my child has really struggled. In my area they were filled with a very high percentage of kids that did not speak English as a first language.With the drop in people coming here, I have managed to get them in. I didn’t vote leave to upset you or to make you leave. I voted leave to make things better for my family.

what is funny is the people who think they have ended low skilled migration. they genuinely think thats what they ve done. they dont realise they have screwed th economy, the gfa, the environment and put off many high skilled migrants from coming here.

what a shame they didnt realise we could have controlled migration more tightly within the eu and that we desparately need low skilled migrants too. sigh.

you voted with banks, farage, cummings, jrm, boris, the etonian elite, the racist fools of the edl and britain first and ukip, trump, putin- and you still think the working class are going to be advantaged by brexit?

staggering.

@Helmetbymidnight and the economists and financial elite have been one of the greatest supporters of the EU. Don't delude yourself to think that the global elite would love to have complete world wide open boarders and a one world government are not pro EU and pro remain because they know it will mean more power to them. Let's replace all governments with one small select group of people and let's be citizens of the world together is the agenda they have been pushing

economists? yes, environmentalists, academics, scientists, busnesses and trade unions, and virtually all professional nhs staff- you still dont know what you've done or who you've sided with.
incredible.

the global elite? umm who exactly?

so you think banks, cummings, farage, lawson, johnson, jrm, rupert murdoch are protecting the british wc from the global elite?

im embarrassed for you.