What have I done to deserve this?

[bestcatintheworld]

Over 20 years I've lived in this country. I never meant to stay longer than two years, but fell in love, got married, had children, stayed here because it was easier for my husband. No economic pressure to come or stay here, strictly for experience as a young person, to work, study and improve my language skills. Worked all the time here, never claimed benefits, paid taxes, got a STEM PhD and am now in a highly skilled job. Now I have to worry about work, breaking up my family, jeopardising my whole existence. Worst of all, I am beginning to feel really unwelcome. I just can't get over this - I never considered myself as a migrant, just an EU citizen settling down, getting on with life. Never felt like a foreigner, loved this country for its open mind and tolerant attitude.
I am finding this all very hard to comprehend.Middle-aged now, and truly screwed. No idea what will happen to me.

The only reason I didn't ask for citizenship before was that I felt guilty taking £800 out of our family money and spend it on myself and my right to vote.

Could you not ask for citizenship now? It wouldn't be self-indulgent; it would be an investment in your DS's future.

I am a bit surprised that people are so blasé about residency etc.

You have to jump through dozens of hoops to get into the US
DB had to go to a lot of trouble, forms/ id stuff, to get residency in Australia, even though he had an Australian wife and 2 DCs.

Much of the restrictions came in recently because the UK was receiving huge numbers of immigrants, so laws were tightened, and the laws apply to everyone outwith the EU.

It all depends on the deal we work on if and when we issue article 50.

People have said that things will be in the air as to wether people would be given temporary visas while they make an application in country (which would be best option, I think spain might be an ally over this?) or that people have to leave an apply from their own countries. Immigration would be swamped, it wasn't that long ago that a blip caused the passport service to go into meltdown

Im a remainer so hope this doesn't happen tbh.

Of course I'm applying for it now! I'm filing in my forms as I speak, it's my only hope. But it takes ages to come through, and God knows if I'll get it on time. I'm informed the Home Office has form for removing people who are in any way not complying with the rules of the moment.

am a bit surprised that people are so blasé about residency etc

What do you mean, Miss? I wasn't even aware that I can apply for residency. All the information I found was for EEA citizens, is the form for EU citizens also? It is 85 pages long!

The whole situation is surreal. I didn't need to get a visa to get married. I didn't need a permit to work. I made my national insurance contributions for over 20 years. As far as I can tell, there is no precedent - surely somebody must protect our rights?

I think I presumed that if you were going to live long term in a country not of your birth that you would apply for residency.

But I can see how EU citizens would believe that is unnecessary.

I've only become a British citizen as I didn't want to have a different status to my children and it gave me easier travelling access to non EU countries such as USA. If I would travel to USA for example under my EU passport I would have had to apply for a visa as my country is not part of the ESTA states.

As I said at heart I felt European and British anyway as my life is here, my kids only speak English (what a stupid decision on my side) as we are a mixed family my husband being British so I couldn't find the time and the energy to speak to my kids in a language my DH wouldn't understand.

I can see why you wouldn't go through the expense of applying for citizenship (before the Brexit), no need as we were all European citizens. The whole process is a pain also, besides being expensive, I had to take the life in UK test (fair enough) and learn things that not even my British husband and my British PIL knew. Then you have to send years worth of proof that you lived here, that you haven't been out of the country for more than 90 days (from what I remember), fill in a whole wood worth of paperwork and remember every time you actually left UK and came back. Then spend a lot of months without any documents because you send your EU passport to Home Office and they keep it as long as they wish, some people I know had to write to them after about 4 months and politely ask them to release their passport as their parent died in their home country and they couldn't go to the funeral.

I know how you feel OP. In many ways I have a similar story. Came here to study, did a STEM PhD and during that time I fell in love with an Englishman, also a PhD student. So after I finished my studies, I chose to stay here for love and got married. Over the years I like to think that I've contributed my skills to this country, had kids, participated in civic life, paid taxes. The main difference is that I'm not originally from an EU country and so I became a British (and European - that's what it says on the front of my passport!) citizen.

In the weeks before the referendum we started to feel that the atmosphere had become, well, a little xenophobic and anti-intellectual. And now the vote is done, we are Leaving or not Leaving or whatever the hell is going on. The economy is in turmoil. Even most Leavers agree it's going to be a rough ride - I've seen estimates on here of 10-20 years. Science and university funding is going to be hit hard because when times are tough nobody can afford that poncy intellectual shit. There are a lot of dissatisfied voters who were expecting all the immigrants to leave and "it can't get worse"

Above all, I no longer feel welcome in my adopted country. My English husband feels similar and he fears for our children.

theelements my English DH feels the same, we listened to the poor German lady on LBC radio so distressed and my husband felt this is not the country we chose to raise our kids in. He is furious with my PIL also who constantly vote UKIP and voted out in the referendum but openly state how much they love me.

One of the first things my DH said to me in a conversation is that he IS European. Well, not anymore...

Fleur and commiserations.

Last night we were talking about leaving the country. Literally the only thing that has stopped DH from phoning his contacts in other countries so far, is that we just moved everything only half a year ago, relocated to a different university partly for DH career but partly to be closer to his ageing parents.

If we leave the country we would lose £££ on the house for example (although I hate the house so maybe that's not so bad) and we would be taking our poor DCs away from school and friends again

"But I can see how EU citizens would believe that is unnecessary."

It wasn't necessary That was the whole beauty of it .

It wasn't only EU workers who benefitted from this but mostly the host country as it was excellent for the economy. Getting the best and brightest heads in academic or highly skilled jobs as well as very willing workers for less skilled jobs has been nothing but beneficial for employers and the economy as well as the tax coffers of the host country.

IME it's only people who aren't from EU countries who don't get the whole idea of Europe. My middle Eastern friends who fled their war torn country voted out because of "too many immigrants" When I tried explaining what shit we were in now she just said"naaahh, you'll be fine". slightly self-absorbed Not sure I can call them friends anymore, but we shall see.

Oh I know a polish person with British passport who voted out due to "too many immigrants, too crowed here now". Not even joking.

Also I am not sure if anybody saw the channel 4 news a couple of nights ago where an Asian person clearly first generation immigrant (had an accent) said there are too many immigrants in his area and he is sick of it. You can only laugh (bitterly)

I do and will always have every sympathy for migrants wherever they're from and consider myself one. I Don't know if immigration has only ever been positive, but I doubt reducing it is what will help the working classes feel much better.

Fleur this actually scares me to death. I've had a look at the form, no way have I got any of these documents anywhere. P60 for the last 5 years? What did you do, could you get replacements? And also, passport kept for months: I can't even do that, my job requires me to travel and to have a valid passport is in my contract. Then again, no residency application, no job, the way it looks right now...

Op I feel exactly the same as you. I am not from EU but from a commonwealth country. I don't have a British passport, but I have right of residency. In the process of applying for passports of my nationality for my children and husband so that we can go back. I have no intention of staying in a country in which I have spent 20 years my life trying to fit in, adapt, contribute, give, and in which I will never be fully accepted. I am not British, will never be British (even if I'd the passport).

But apparently we have to grow some balls and get on with our lives and get over ourselves (as per other threads).

I am sorry, blue. And I won't be growing balls anytime soon.

bestcat from what I can remember you can request P60 duplicates from HMRC.

My meltdown was providing proof of living in this country for 5 years, I needed two separate documents to prove my address and I never thought of it before therefore all our bills were in my husband's name. I only had bank statements. I remember being so frustrated as they would not accept (back then) mobile phone bills, I can't remember why, I actually remember crying. Oh and searching all my holiday history as they want exact dates of when you travelled (so if you travel frequently with work I feel for you). You would think Home office would know this anyway, no?

Oh yes, and the passport thing, sending it there and not knowing when you get it back... My country though has ID documents besides passports and you can travel on your ID card inside EU.

In the "early days" (I know it is actually still early days) after the result, I lurked on a couple of threads in which people, both British and foreign, were saying that they were thinking of leaving because of Brexit. Most responses were kind and urging people to stay, but there were several posters who, full of bullish triumphalism, were telling people to bugger off and not let the door hit them on the way out. I shall put this down to early exuberance but responses like that leave a bitter aftertaste.

As I said above, we feel a bit stuck for now. But if Brexit does go ahead, there is a 100% likelihood that we will be leaving the country in the next 5 years. That is not because of some sort of pro-Remain negative thinking flounce, but because science and university funding will definitely be reduced and talented researchers from everywhere will be harder to recruit. On another thread I posted a link to how much funding UK universities receive directly from the EU (that's not including the fees from EU students who will now not be coming, or any other overseas students who might be put off by our shambolic international performance this week) - no response at all.

Feeling unwelcome because of my skin colour and one of them "know-nothing experts" will be the emotional icing on the financial turdcake.

YY bestcat it was many years ago that I applied for British citizenship and even back then it was a total ball ache and really expensive. Sympathies!

What I found very ironic was the fact that PIL voted leave but they (believe) they love me and now my DH is open to leaving this country for Canada maybe. We said we'll wait for a while as we wouldn't be able to sell the house anyway now (or we'd lose money on it) but if things go from bad to worse as I fear he's happy to go. Now last time I mentioned moving to another country only jokingly my MIL burst into tears. Now they are part of the ones driving us into it... Sad really...

Same here Fleur I don't know how MiL voted but we inadvertently found out how FiL voted, because DH overheard him whispering (he's a bit deaf so his idea of whispering, well, isn't) to an acquaintance at the local church bazaar that he had voted Leave because of 26 million Turkish people

I didn't know this while I was telling them how much funding the universities and scientific research was going to lose. MiL looked all worried about our jobs. Neither seemed to have any inkling (yet) how the anti-immigrant sentiment unleashed by this vote is going to make life harder for their own son's family, their beloved mixed-race grandchildren

Fleur, thanks for the idea of an ID, my country has that too and I will apply. I too have no utility bills in my name, other than mobile phone! How did you get around that then?

Element, if I still worked in academia, I'd want to leave too. Funding is already hard to get, and it will be a disaster. Talk about brain drain. Is that really what they wanted?

Bestcat, find out if your country allows you to have multiple passports. Ironically UK does. We had colleagues who needed to travel at the drop of a hat but also needed a visa to far flung places in Africa and their passport had to be submitted to their embassy for days/weeks. The UK allows its citizens two active passports in these special cases.

bestcat in the end I remembered the cable tv was in my name as I switched providers and I put my name on it, had to switch to paper bill as I was on paperless, wait for the next bill to come, or something like that. Also keep spam mail from reputable companies such as gas or cable tv as they were happy with that also. I'll look into it again and report back my findings as I have some friends currently applying for naturalisation so I'll ask them. Mine was done about 6 years ago.

Thank you fleur, that would be very helpful