Polish
workers, Indian students and Italian politicians voice fears over
Brexit effect on British culture
Following
the Tory conference, many European nationals fear they will be forced
to leave. We look at how this concern is now affecting the UK’s
image overseas
There are 2.1
million EU nationals employed in the UK.
Tracy McVeigh,
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Helena Smith and Vidhi Doshi
Saturday 8 October
2016 22.00 BST
Two young Polish
women on the train from Gatwick into London are chattering away, bags
at their feet. Off the flight from Kraków after five days at home
with family, they followed the news, and the speeches, from Britain
all week. “You have to – so as to get an idea of how long before
we will be driven out of England. I’m sure it will happen,” said
Angela, who is the manager of a gastropub near Oxford.
“It’s sad this
is the way things are going because I was pleased to have a woman
prime minister, but my boss said to me it will be bad. He’s angry
because he wants to choose staff for how good they are, not their
nationality. He says it will be hard to replace me, which is nice to
hear,” she said.
Angela and her
friend, Martina, are among the 600,000 people who will not have been
in the UK for five years – giving, under present rules, permanent
residency rights – by the time the UK leaves the EU in 2019. Now
she and her friend are alarmed by the tone of the rhetoric that
emerged from last week’s Tory conference. They are among thousands
across Europe and beyond who fear that life for people hoping to
settle in Britain may be about to become more difficult.
Of the 2.1 million
EU nationals employed in the UK, Poles are the biggest group. Of EU
nationals in the UK, Poles number 916,000, Irish 332,000, Romanians
233,000 and Portuguese 219,000, according to latest figures from the
Office of National Statistics.
“My cousin is a
priest here, he would rather be in Poland, close to his old mother,
but he came where there is a shortage [of priests] and to be where he
is needed. Britain does need workers,” Angela said. “In Poland
people are worried, shocked. They say Britain is now dangerous and
tell stories in the newspaper of race attacks and murders. People are
scared if their children are living here,” she added.
After a week in
which opposition parties labelled comments on immigration and foreign
workers’ rights in speeches at the Tory conference as “toxic”,
reaction around the world has been swift. There has been shock at
what an Italian senator, Francesco Palermo, called “populist
hysteria” in a continent grown nervous over the migration crisis.
“Brexit was aimed
at marking the distance between the UK and Europe,” Palermo told
the Observer. “This conference seems, however, to prove the
contrary: growing populist hysteria is becoming a common denominator
between the UK and Europe.”
“I just hope this
statement does not fall under the latest prohibition for foreigners
to comment on Brexit,” he added.
One of Italy’s
leading columnists, Gianni Riotta, said: “Some Italians saluted
Brexit as a liberation from the heavy European saddle. Now they
realise the nasty undertone poisoning Brexit. The lists of
foreigners, the ethnic cleansing of doctors and nurses from British
hospitals. They now worry. Many Italians work in the UK, to find a
job Italy is not offering them.
“They worry, some
are already packing. Brace yourself for some nasty payback should the
Conservatives insist on this jingoism,” he said. In Greece, at the
coalface of the refugee crisis, the government deplored the rise of
what it described as dangerous language. “Ukip, it seems, has
contaminated the Tories with its … xenophobia. This is a very sad
development for Britain and Europe,” deputy minister for European
affairs Nikos Xydakis told the Observer.
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“We are seeing the
extreme right pushing the mainstream agenda with its discourse and
practices, its speech of hate, racism and fear,” he added. “That
is the core problem of Europe. It is a danger for peace and democracy
and it is knocking at our door.”
An estimated 22,000
Greek students are in higher education in the UK, their parents often
making huge sacrifices for the privilege. Greece also has a huge
contingent of academics ensconced in teaching and research positions
at British universities. Attracting foreign students – and foreign
expertise in teaching and research – is a key source of revenue for
British universities.
Another well-beaten
trail into British institutions comes from India, where people are
now thinking twice about going to the UK, said Falguni Laheru, a
solicitor at immigration law firm SmartMove4Visas. “[Indians] have
come to expect immigration updates with a mixture of unease and
distress,” she said.
Jibes at foreigners
have already cost Britain jobs, she said, pointing to two of her own
clients who have just opted to set up new offices in the Netherlands
and Germany respectively, as a direct result of visa restrictions
there being unlikely to change.
“All the qualified
workers now prefer migrating to Canada, Australia and New Zealand,”
she said. “The feeling of our highly skilled clients is that while
the UK needs our skills, we do not feel wanted.”
In 2013, when then
prime minister David Cameron led a trade delegation to India, he gave
a TV interview saying the UK would be “incredibly welcoming” to
Indians who wanted to study in the UK. The interview was interpreted
as Cameron suggesting conscientious, hardworking Indians were the
right kind of immigrant for the UK.
Rahul Chatterjee,
who has now decided to apply to US universities for his postgraduate
degree, said Britain needs highly skilled immigrant labour from
India. “If I were a blue-collar worker, and I saw other people,
foreigners, getting jobs, and I wasn’t getting one, I’d be pretty
ticked off too. If that is the case. But obviously some people lack
the kind of education to understand the economic benefits immigrants
bring.
“The US allows
students to work anywhere in the country for one year after
completing an undergrad degree. So you can see why many students
prefer that. Politicians like Amber Rudd and Theresa May know
economically that they need foreign guys to drive down prices, but
the stuff they say is to appeal to public sentiment.”
Ashmita Lucktoo,
editor of NRI World, a magazine for expat Indians, said people felt
hurt by the rising anti-immigrant talk. “The UK used to be the
golden bird of the world, they used to rule India, and now they’re
not on top any more, so there’s an inferiority complex, especially
with regard to brown skin,” she said.
“Even if you have
a degree or skills, you’re forced into menial jobs like working at
Burger King or Starbucks. Indians are now under enormous pressure to
succeed; if you’re going to the UK, either you have to succeed and
make it really big, or you may as well come home and have some
dignity.”
British
business pleads against ‘hard Brexit’
Lobby
groups said government must ensure Brexit terms provide ‘stability,
prosperity and improved living standards.’
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
10/8/16, 6:33 PM CET Updated 10/8/16, 6:42 PM CET
A group of major
British business lobbies urged their government in a letter Saturday
to retain access to Europe’s single market after the U.K.’s exit
from the European Union.
In the letter, the
Confederation of British Industry and EEF manufacturers’ group
argued that a ‘hard’ Brexit would harm exporters, destroy jobs
and raise costs for local industry.
“We respect the
result of the referendum, but the government must make sure that the
terms for the deal to leave ensure stability, prosperity and improved
living standards,” the groups, which represent hundreds of
thousands of employees, wrote.
If Britain lost
access to the EU’s single market and reverted to World Trade
Organization rules on international trade, the groups said, costs
would rise by 20 percent for Britain’s food and drink industry and
by 10 percent for car producers.
“Every credible
study that has been conducted has shown that (the) WTO option would
do serious and lasting damage to the U.K. economy and those of our
trading partners,” the letter read.
The lobby groups
were reacting to British Prime Minister Theresa May’s endorsement
of a ‘hard’ Brexit. At the Conservative Party conference, she
said that Britain would not remain in the EU single market if that
meant losing control of immigration.
However, European
leaders warned Britain this week that failing to respect EU rules on
the free circulation of people would rule out access to the single
market.
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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