WorkingMummy

midivydale Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Saffron, a classic example of "it is not so much > you, it is the rest of them" so often used by > racists and xenophobes. As if I am supposed to be > grateful/proud/pleased that I am "ok" and not like > "the rest of them". Quite! Campaigning in my street, I spoke to a very nice (I had thought) lady with a huge house and another in the country too, who was committed to voting leave because we don't need Europe (??) and there is too much immigration (clearly nothing to overcrowd her living space). When I said, really? My children's father is a migrant, my children are first generation British-European, and we live with a lovely nanny who is an EU migrant too ..., she said, "Oh, don't worry about them. They are white, and it's just a racist policy, isn't it? They won't deport your husband." ?!?? Point. Made. (And she is very ignorant, because in fact our Swedish nanny is not white. Black people are born in Sweden too.)

Saffron - I completely understand. Thank you for speaking out and putting yourself in the firing line. I am sorry you have been abused. A lot of the leave vote is about racism. People can deny it as much as they like. You cannot be any kind of apologist for UKIP or Gove without having a high degree of comfort with some very foul ideas. People in Middlesborough who don't give a xxxx about the EU, who have seen a marked increase in immigration from the Middle East in the last two years and who responded to that mostly with great humanity (churches with very poor congregations running English language courses, helping refugees with housing applications, that kind of thing) - communities like that who voted leave because austerity is hurting them - badly - and they feel they have nothing left to lose and this vote was an opportunity, to demand change, of some kind - none of that is a problem to me. I have no anger at all for them - only anger towards the government who put them in that position and was then arrogant enough to ask for their support and trust in a popular vote. But people in the Home Counties, the south west, middle class people who voted leave and say that Farage is not racist - he just speaks plainly. They can fu(? off if they want me to believe this vote was not about jingoism, fear of "others" and yes racism.

Please would everyone who feels empathy for families like mine - and who appreciates the value of free movement upon which the EU (and plenty of people's lives within it) is based, please consider this petition? It is thoughtful in its terms and its message is important. https://www.change.org/p/council-of-the-european-union-a-formal-apology-for-david-cameron-s-statement-about-migration?recruiter=561376202&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-md-share_petition-no_msg&recuruit_context=fb_share_mention_control&fb_ref=Default

I fully accept that quids and appreciate it. Then why can't May - or the government for that matter - just say it?

It is very comforting to read the solidarity expressed by everyone on this. I have felt half mad at times, because people around me - who I know to be kind and fair - have struggled to get how this feels. And that is very disorientating - because for families like mine this is seismic, and you end up feeling like you must be on a different planet from people you felt so connected to, two weeks ago. I found the overwhelming majority with which last night's vote was carried some comfort. But I can't escape the sense of dread that May engenders. As I say, her record on handling these types of situations (families with various different immigration statuses) as Home Sec showed a heartlessness that echoed Thatcher in the worst sense. Also until about one week ago she expressly wished to leave the ECHR, removing my family's article 8 rights that shaunag so sensibly cites. The most stupid thing about all this that it is truly is inconceivable that the EU will take this reciprocal stance, for the Human Rights reasons shaunag states, and also because the EU has said consistently - for months - that the reason it will insist that the UK triggers article 50, and actually exits before it even considers talking about re-entry/trade deals etc, is because (as well as that being what the Lisbon treaty requires) it REFUSES to allow its citizens living here to be used as chips in trade talks. .... Which means it is pointless, absolutely mindless, for May to "preserve" her negotiating position in this way. There is no bargain to be struck. The EU will not expel UK citizens and if May threatens to do that to EU citizens it will bring her no advantage in trade talks. Whereas if the government now committed not to do this awful thing it is contemplating, exit talks would be amicable and families and businesses built on eu migration could sleep easy again. All of which makes me think - May's position is not pragmatic - as she claims; it is ideological. Which is terrifying. Not just for me but for all of us. But then she was the most heartless HS in recent history and she did want to leave the ECHR....so perhaps this is no surprise. Dark times.

Exactly. It is about encouraging people to build family arrangements on citizenships that you then suddenly strip away.

Jeremy - there are affordability-of-dependence checks on those types of visas too. Which many people are worried about and may not pass. Mays record of heartlessness in that regard whilst HS was awful. Anyhow, how do you think it even feels to suddenly have to think this way about your own family - in your own country.

Midivydale is right. Forgive me, but I am not counting on good sense or compassion to prevail anywhere. Especially if May is PM. Her record on migration - especially as regards mixed-nationality families, is appalling. And her words of late have been far from reassuring. What people in my and Midivydale's situation crave - and had until Bexit - is security to make plans beyond tomorrow. And no - you can't get any kind of visa or residence permit today if today you are an EU citizen because today the UK is in the EU. Both my ex and my nanny have requested this type of reassurance within the last ten days and have been rejected on the grounds that they are EU citizens. You also continue to overlook the loss of EU citizenship to individual (British) members of mixed European families.

Jeremy, my-ex's country does not give our spousal visas that allow you to live elsewhere in EU. Anyway I am not married or co-habiting. My marriage broke down. But my ex stayed in the country to live around the corner from me and the kids. Now he is threatened with ejection - listen to May if you can't believe it - and anyhow his job is moving to France or possibly Belgium(not his country of birth either). The kids can follow but I can't. As for his status here, eu and efta citizens are not permitted to apply for residence - they have it. Citizenship is a possibility but it is 1) expensive and 2) not guaranteed. My ex has had periods back in his country within the last 5 years which - although punctuated with lots of visits to us - may disqualify him. This whole sh\tty business creates uncertainties and anguish which no one brought up in this country ever thought they would face. Believe me, I and people like me are working damn hard to secure our families cohesion right now and it is far from the breeze you imply. I don't mean to be rude - only factual. You have no idea.

Feel free not to read.

516 - i am very, very grateful for your expressions of support - moral and practical. I am trying to get some work done today, but will order long form versions of my mums birth certificate and hopefully my grandparents marriage certificate from london registries today and hopefully go from there. I did search for my irish grandmother's birth record in Northern Ireland records last night and had no luck. I will use these resources, thank you.

Midivydale - I am welling up as I write this - I want to forgive - but I feel the same. Yesterday, I had to contact my out-voting (conservative working class) mother to ask her for details of her own Irish mother's birth and ancestory, so that I can apply for an Irish passport. So that I can retain the same EU citizenship as my kids and their German speaking father. So that we can stay together as a family in future. Both in the short term and for the next generation of our little family. My mother asked me. Why do you want to be Irish?? Broke my heart. Midivydale. I remember when you and I used to connect over in the family room, over the Swedish literature that you grew up with; that my kids read in German here in London with their Swiss/German dad. How simple the world then seemed.

And by the way uncleglen I have relatives in Middlesborough and Wales. Me and my kids spent Easter in a semi with my younger sister and her children who live in Middleton-St George, Durham. I spent 4 years in Kettering as a teenager. And I have no wish to live in the continent I want to stay in my home where my children were born. So take your stereotypes and !!!! Off.

..... I am really loathe to draw comparisons with 1930s Germany - because, it seems so disrespectful to the memory of those who were murdered in the holocaust - and we are by no means there - BUT, with the language being used on this forum by some, the term "rich remainers" included, with the racist tone of the whole debate, with the racist abuse my family has encountered in the last few days, with my family members scrabbling about to try and pass exams and pay fees and fill in forms, just to be good enough to continue to live here (where they were entitled and encouraged to build a life), with my own day mapped out today, to be spent searching though London and Irish records of births and marriages to establish my own Irish ethnicity in order to qualify for an Irish passport so that I can stay with my family if we have to move...... With all this, I am beginning to feel that I have a glimpse, a glimpse, of what it must have been like to have been a Jewish mother in fascist Berlin c 1931. Congratulations. Great Britain. And uncleglen.

Uncleglen, you need to educate yourself about the millions of dual nationality and/or European families who now face break-up or forced migration, and about the thousands of people whose jobs are going to move, who can't follow their jobs without an eU passport, before you use such vile, denigrating and harmful language.

So ironic that you are making this point about a one day strike by one profession, when you argue for divorce from the EU - a seismic upheaval for millions of us - on the basis of a 38% popular (and misguided) mandate.

...also the EU did way more good for this country than...Diana? FFS.

jaywalker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Boris said people like me who are weeping are like > those who wept for Diana. > > I think he is wrong. I agree. Very wrong. It was deeply offensive to the families he has left, gripped by anxiety.

Agreed. They also care nothing for the families that Brexit will break up or force to migrate.

.

516 - that's really helpful. I have my grandmothers full name and dob but will have to try to get new documentation as my mother has none. Apparently she was born in Belfast so perhaps the 1922 destruction you mention will not be a problem. They are inundated with hopeful would-be Irish just now though - I know of 5 other people applying through friends. Thank you for your expression of sympathy jaywalker.

Yes - AlanMedic - I was not really too conscious of the fact that I had built my life on my EU citizenship until Brexit threatened to take it away. You obviously do not have children of dual nationality with a non-British European co-parent, who is being threatened with being ejected, whose job in any event looks like it will move. Because if you were you would be painfully aware that without your EU citizenship, you can't follow your co-parent (with your children) and keep your family together. If the country suddenly decided by referendum that AlanMedic's children's mother could no longer live in this country, and that AlanMedic could no longer go and live in said baby-mother's country either, then you would find that you had built your life on a lot of things which you take for granted right now, AlanMedic. Alan Medic Wrote: -------------------------------- > I've never built a life of being a citizen of > anywhere. I'm not sure what it means to be honest. > Your life is your life. It doesn't depend on > politics. Enjoy it if you can. Anyway if it > worries you so much at least you can get an Irish > passport. It doesn't guarantee being happy though. > Remember, the world will end.....for everyone.

Leave/Remain has nothing to do with left/right. And she is right that he is a f67(ing s::t.

It's disgusting. People of my generation grew up being told by our leaders that we were European and we believed them. Many of us committed to making the idea of the European family the reality of lives. For decades, we have lived, loved, had families, on the understanding that our partner's, children's, EU citizenship would give them equal rights in this country as our own British passports give us. And that in turn our, EU citizenship gave us the ability to follow our family members (of other nationalities) around the continent as personal situations and hard-nosed economics dictated. Now all that seems under threat. To hear Thersea May and the other ?uc?wit Tories debate whether the father of my children can or cannot definitely stay post Brexit is sickening. But what they have not factored in at all - what doesn't seem to have even entered their narrow minded little heads - is what taking away my EU citizenship does for the cohesion of my family in future. Having built my life on my EU citizenship, I feel utterly, utterly betrayed. Thank God - from a completely selfish point of view - I have today had it confirmed that my maternal grandmother was born in Ireland in 1900, entitling me to an Irish passport. But I know other British mothers of European families who do not have this comfort and it is awful for them. I am seriously considering paying the 227 quid to renounce my BRITISH citizenship, once my Irish passport is sorted. I feel I have very little connection left with this land that I have lived in all my life.

I have old school friends who have "migrated" there. They posted it to Facebook.