« It takes half a Nation to ruin a Nation

I landed at Heathrow airport the summer of 2006, one day I was interviewing in Dublin, to kill time I was on a tourist bus when I received a phone call from ThoughtWorks UK, they wanted me to come to London for interviews.

My initial plan was to stay in the UK for five years, after 3 months of rain I asked ThoughtWorks to send me abroad, England is not easy for Italians.

At ThoughtWorks I learnt how to be a better consultant and software engineer but also I met people from all around the world, like minded citizens of the world.

I always found it easier to hangout with ‘foreigners’: you have a few things in common, you are both away from your family, you did ‘reset’ your life, you have inevitably fewer friends and a greater need to make new ones in the new country, some of the people I met 10 years ago when I arrived are still my friends, I invited them to my wedding (yes, meanwhile I’ve got married in Britain, I have a British wife) I consider some of them my extended family.

I did live in a few different parts of the UK: a few months York, almost a year in North Wales, most of my time in London, more recently I’ve spent quite some time in Somerset.

I never felt unwelcome, perhaps because of the multicultural people I was hanging out, but also, being a consultant I had to meet a lot of ‘locals’.

Most of the time the initial small talk with a British person ends up on ‘oh I’ve been to Lake of Como’, or ‘how do you cook a proper carbonara’ or, ‘is it true that you guys don’t drink cappuccino after 11am’?

There are plenty of ice breakers, with time my accent probably got a bit better, of course, I am not as white as your stereotypical Brit and I’ve a hairy face, but somehow I’ve managed to blend in.

And then there is London, before London, I was living in Vienna, I went back there a couple of times, lovely city but I always came back to London thinking ‘gosh they really speak one language and they are monochromatic’.

London is an economic, social, multi cultural experiment, in my limited knowledge it is truly the capital of Europe and probably of the entire modern world. I’ve been to NY a couple of times and I see way more division, way less equality, London is (or was now?) the place to be.

So, I am rooted here, I bought a house, I have two dogs, a wife and more recently a daughter: in fact the day before the referendum my half italian half british daughter was born (sorry little one, it’s not the best time in history to be born).

Long gone are the days when I could pack all I had in 5 or 6 bags and move, I’ve a job that I love at Equal Experts and I am in charge of too many things just to leave.

I don’t feel welcome any longer in this country, it is sad and frightening but how can you feel comfortable being an immigrant after all the talk in the media against immigrants? I can’t leave and I won’t leave, by now my house price has probably fallen, my pension value has gone down at least 20%, even my retirement plan to warmer shores with the GPB going down as it did might already be compromised.

I made a mistake and I think a lot of EU immigrants made the same mistake: I didn’t apply for British citizenship, I always felt like an EU citizen, living on EU soil, I was wrong. I couldn’t cast my vote. How many of us made the same mistake?

At the hospital one of the midwives that helped us deliver our baby told us: “I am Romanian, I worked here for 15 years, I always paid taxes, I went to the polling station and they told me I couldn’t vote, why?”

There you go, the UK never fully joined the EU, otherwise there would have been different laws, like in other countries, after 10 years paying taxes in this country, why are we not integrated, why can’t we vote?

Why does it have to be a proactive choice? Why do we have to swear to the Queen? Why is it not automatic?

It feels like a plot, now we are a cancer that half of the population wants to expel and the other half realises we actually help build what Britain looks like.

We built it together, this country is now not just ham and cheese and chicken balti but it’s also amazing pizza, pasta, steak, wine, the list goes on: european food.

I was in England before 2006, I was here 20 years ago for the very first time, I fell in love with it, it was the best holiday of my life, I never had so much fun, but I also lost weight, I do remember only Mc Donalds in the streets in Oxford. At the college where I was pretending to study the language I ate strawberries jelly and some strange chicken with prunes in it for three weeks.

I am actually not even that bothered about UK being in the EU, what bothers me is that the Leave campaign created and exasperated a climate of hate and division and history says that nothing good comes from that, only more hate and division.

It might take years to leave the EU, it might not even happen but the scars from this referendum probably won’t ever fully heal, it will take generations.

The weakest, the elderly, the poorest have been mind controlled, today we live in a divided, weaker, scarier United Kingdom, it’s not fun for me, it’s not going to be fun for my daughter and it all seems like just a political battle, inside a party.

Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson & friends are like kids that played with fire and ended up burning down their parents house, they don’t even know what to do now, everybody now will worry about the collapsing economy while xenophobia will grow and grow.

I believe, in a few years, that it will be obvious to the masses: the Leave movement is headed by a bunch of selfish liars and xenophobes and it will be a costly exercise, not only for the pockets but also for the millions of immigrants that made Britain a better place in the last 40+ years.