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| Six real life stories of migration | Six real life stories of migration |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| New EU migrants have not had a significant impact on the employment prospects of British school-leavers, according to an official government report by immigration experts. But according to poll by the Guardian and ICM published in June, almost half of British voters believe that the impact of immigration on employment underlies their sense of economic insecurity. The latest NatCen British Social Attitudes survey also shows that a quarter of British people said that they believed the main reason immigrants came to the UK was to claim benefits. | |
| Approximately 7.5 million people in the UK were born abroad, making up 13% of the overall population. We asked readers to tell us about their experiences of immigration and many responded in detail. Here, readers - from Romania to Canada - tell us why they came to the UK, about the challenges of gaining legal status and which aspects of British society make them want to stay or leave. | Approximately 7.5 million people in the UK were born abroad, making up 13% of the overall population. We asked readers to tell us about their experiences of immigration and many responded in detail. Here, readers - from Romania to Canada - tell us why they came to the UK, about the challenges of gaining legal status and which aspects of British society make them want to stay or leave. |
| "I have had the most incredible journey of escape" | "I have had the most incredible journey of escape" |
| Anonymous, 47, moved from Istanbul to Birmingham, via Paris. | Anonymous, 47, moved from Istanbul to Birmingham, via Paris. |
| As a 17 year old in Istanbul, my life was unbearably hard. I was brutally seperated from my birth mother at the age of 13 by my dictatorial father who went on to abuse me and my brother in every possible way. We were regularly tortured by him and threatened with death. I have had the most incredible journey of escape under this threat. | |
| After an extremely risky process I managed to make my way to Paris. Aged 18, I was terrified. I could not speak French and had no experience of travelling alone. I felt all alone. I spent two years at the Sorbonne, found a good job and my own flat. During holidays in England I met the father of my three children. It was a huge surprise when I found out I was pregnant with my first child and I had no idea what to do. I decided to stay in London. I wanted the baby to grow up with the father and his family as I did not have a family myself. It feIt precious. I became very emotional and did not want to hurt the father by taking the baby away. | |
| We got married and went on to have three beautiful and amazing children. They were born here and they are British. I have not put them on a Turkish passport as I still have nightmares about my father finding me and my children. I have been working and paying taxes for years and brought my three children up as a single mother until my youngest child Hope got killed by a 18 ton heavy goods vehicle on her way back from school. | |
| I did not come here for money or benefits; safety and freedom were my main concerns. I am forever grateful that I have had the opportunity to become a free citizen who is entitled to a normal life. Bringing up our children in a free country is priceless. | |
| "The most difficult thing about Britain has been the sexism" | "The most difficult thing about Britain has been the sexism" |
| Gillian, 35, moved from Quebec, Canada to Surrey | Gillian, 35, moved from Quebec, Canada to Surrey |
| As a Canadian who is also black, I find myself in this funny area of the immigration Venn diagram. No one complains about Canadians, Americans, Australians or South Africans coming here and taking jobs. We are taking a heck of a lot of them - we are being head hunted, recruited and paid even more than you, but no one minds. Is it because we are normally white? I have experienced more racism than I ever did in Canada. | As a Canadian who is also black, I find myself in this funny area of the immigration Venn diagram. No one complains about Canadians, Americans, Australians or South Africans coming here and taking jobs. We are taking a heck of a lot of them - we are being head hunted, recruited and paid even more than you, but no one minds. Is it because we are normally white? I have experienced more racism than I ever did in Canada. |
| People are always nice to me when they hear my accent. I can't help feel that my Canadian upbringing is welcome but my brown skin is not. I have been called a "paki" and had guys making monkey noises at me. But I can't talk about these things with friends because they want to pretend that Britain does not have a race problem. So I basically just stopped going out. | People are always nice to me when they hear my accent. I can't help feel that my Canadian upbringing is welcome but my brown skin is not. I have been called a "paki" and had guys making monkey noises at me. But I can't talk about these things with friends because they want to pretend that Britain does not have a race problem. So I basically just stopped going out. |
| The most difficult thing about living in Britain for me has been the sexism. I was not used to sexual harassment in public places or sexual 'banter' as some sort of acceptable norm, but there are topless women in newspapers, lads mags, the pay gap, lack of promotion, discrimination against pregnant women, as well as high levels of rape and sex assaults. I feel very uncomfortable and unsafe and I am happy to be moving back to Canada soon. Quite simply, I think British men just hate women. | |
| "I don't have the right to choose who I love" | "I don't have the right to choose who I love" |
| Charles Brophy, 23, living in Liverpool with his Malaysian partner | Charles Brophy, 23, living in Liverpool with his Malaysian partner |
| I met my girlfriend at university a few years ago. She is studying for the Bar in the hope of a career as a barrister. I hope to study for a PhD and go into a career in research or academia. We're both more than capable of reaching our goals and if we were both British we could envisage a bright future together. Sadly this isn't the case because while I'm a fully fledged British citizen my girlfriend is Malaysian. | |
| She paid an extortionate amount for a degree which she got very little value from and is she has felt increasingly unwelcome, criminalised and imposed upon by a dense and costly layer of bureaucracy. Yet this is someone who has a better command of the language than most of those who live here or run the country, a better knowledge of its history and law, and much more to contribute than most. | |
| In previous years as a couple there would have been lots of options open to us. She could have applied for a post-study work visa or we could have registered our relationship or even married to gain a spousal visa. This is a cost and sacrifice we would make but we have been told that marriage alone will not keep us both together in the UK - I must meet a £18,600 earnings threshold. The burden is on me alone, but I'm unemployed in a difficult graduate job market and the funding for PhD study will never meet the requirement. | |
| My girlfriend's student visa runs out in August, to overstay will harm any chances we have of legally living together in this country and would possibly end with her confined in an immigration detention centre with all of the threats that go with it. We are now in the amazing position in which a foreign student can bring their family to live with them in the UK but British students cannot be afforded the same right. | |
| As a British citizen I don't have the right to choose who I love. Either I will have to relocate to Malaysia, a country with significantly lower life chances, giving up academic study and my life in the UK - or we can be split up for potentially years as I attempt to find good work so that I can fulfill arbitrary government targets. | |
| "I am afraid for my safety in this country because of my national origin" | "I am afraid for my safety in this country because of my national origin" |
| Alexa123, moved from Romania to the UK | Alexa123, moved from Romania to the UK |
| I am a Romanian with double citizenship. Romanians were given full rights to work in the UK at the beginning of this year. I first came to this country on a work permit in the late 90s. There has been a dramatic worsening of public attitudes towards Romanians since then. I returned in 2007. | |
| Since then a lettings agency asked me to provide a British guarantor, a GP's secretary told me flatly "we do not take Romanian patients" and a bank clerk said to me: "we don't accept Romanian customers". | |
| I've paid tens of thousands of pounds in national insurance and never taken a penny out in benefits - no housing benefits, no tax credits, no child benefits - nothing at all. I have contributed to this society, which I have begun to think of and love as if it were my own. I have British friends who respect me for the person I am but for the first time I am afraid for my safety in this country because of my national origin. While I agree that immigration must be discussed in the open, the way Romanians are presented to the public by officials and by the media - as benefit scroungers who come here and create a housing crisis - only stirs up hatred and xenophobia. It could hurt the UK's image as a tolerant society, discourage foreign tourism and talent from choosing the UK. Britain and its people have a lot to gain from its positive image in the world. It would be such a shame to throw it away. | |
| "The government can barely do more to make the lives of legal migrants in Britain more difficult" | |
| Jonathan Abourbih, 35, moved from Ontario, Canada to Scotland | Jonathan Abourbih, 35, moved from Ontario, Canada to Scotland |
| I moved to the UK in 2008 from Canada and learned that I couldn't plan my life more than 30 days in advance, because a pen stroke by the Home Secretary can send me home packing. I'm a software developer and was attracted to the incredibly innovative UK technology sector. I discovered the (now cancelled) tier one general visa scheme, which enticed young, educated, highly-skilled migrants to this country with the promise of unrestricted employment, and settlement after five years of highly-skilled work. | |
| There's barely more that the government can do to make the lives of legal migrants in Britain more difficult. The government's "Hostile Environment Working group" (now called the Inter-Ministerial Group on migrants' access to benefits and public services) penned the 2014 Immigration Act, which proposes charging migrants for the use of certain NHS services, despite us paying the same tax as everyone else. | |
| It will restrict our ability to house ourselves and our families - it's possible landlords will just be able to refuse non-British tenants. The government have made something as innocuous as a minor traffic offence into automatic grounds for the refusal of further visas. | |
| Despite all this, I wouldn't leave for the world. I love my adopted home; I love my friends; I love my partner, whom I met here; I love the multiculturalism, the landscape, and the British people. I want to believe that the truth about public attitudes to immigration isn't what I see in the press, but is rather reflected by my real interactions. | |
| "I've stopped thinking of myself as an immigrant" | "I've stopped thinking of myself as an immigrant" |
| Tom Burkard, 70, moved from Michigan in the USA to Norwich. | Tom Burkard, 70, moved from Michigan in the USA to Norwich. |
| My first contact with the British empire was when our destroyer called at Gibraltar on our way to join the US sixth fleet in 1967. A couple of scouse squaddies introduced me to the glories of Watney's Red Barrel and helped me evade the shore patrol. In 1971, just after decimal currency was introduced, I came as a tourist on a boat from the Hook of Holland. I fell in with two chaps returning home on leave. Our boat was late, and when we got to Liverpool Street Station, I couldn't catch my connection to St Albans, so one of the soldiers - a West Indian - invited me to his home in South London. We were somewhat worse for wear when we showed up, but his mother made up the couch (with starched sheets, no less!). This set the tone for the hospitality that I encountered almost everywhere. | My first contact with the British empire was when our destroyer called at Gibraltar on our way to join the US sixth fleet in 1967. A couple of scouse squaddies introduced me to the glories of Watney's Red Barrel and helped me evade the shore patrol. In 1971, just after decimal currency was introduced, I came as a tourist on a boat from the Hook of Holland. I fell in with two chaps returning home on leave. Our boat was late, and when we got to Liverpool Street Station, I couldn't catch my connection to St Albans, so one of the soldiers - a West Indian - invited me to his home in South London. We were somewhat worse for wear when we showed up, but his mother made up the couch (with starched sheets, no less!). This set the tone for the hospitality that I encountered almost everywhere. |
| Sadly, things have got a lot worse in recent years. In the north of England, Asians and English live parallel lives, with very little contact. The Anglo-American response to 9/11 has a lot to answer for, but I think the real culprit is the race relations industry, which would disappear altogether if things had kept on like they were in Brum a generation ago. As for myself, I've long since stopped thinking of myself as an immigrant. | |
| On the whole, being a Yank is a positive advantage. Back in the 1970s, there were still a lot of people who remembered when the Yanks were "overpaid, oversexed and over here." Fortunately, my uncle taught me the right riposte: Brits were "underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower." Eventually I became British and now it's something I seldom think about. Between 1973 and 1984 I lived in Birmingham and witnessed only one racial incident and it was such a relief after all the racial paranoia in the US. | |