We know very little about what the Brexit agreement will look like. As long as high paying jobs exist, nothing stops highly skilled European people from continuing to get them, even if that involves a bit more bureaucracy.
And if somebody is willing to suffer through bureaucracy and be humiliated in that process, for a city that has an insanely high cost of living, then why would people go to London instead of San Francisco or New York?
The problem with leaving the EU is that the EU provides competitive advantages and opportunities that are now going to be gone.
Plus that referendum is signaling to me, an European, that I'm not wanted there. Oh and I'm also a Romanian and we've been used as scapegoats in the UK's anti-immigration campaign. Don't think that I'm going to forget that easily.
In the longer term we are looking at a move to Germany as she speaks fluent German (she worked as a translator), Hungarian and English and I'm a programmer.
I've never been particularly proud of been British (I didn't get to tick a box saying where I wanted to be born) but these days I am ashamed.
The situation when the color of your passport is more important that any of your eduction, qualifications and experience is the rule, not an exception. It is how the world works by default, for people outside IT, and for most people inside IT too.
I'm kind of annoyed how people from first-world countries are suddently striken with this revelation when it suddently affects somebody they know, shows how blind they were when it didn't.
I originally wanted to live/work here, to the extent of job hunting and getting offered a job - I decided not to go ahead because I would have to go through hell every time I wanted to take a break/vacation and go somewhere.
Living/working in the schengen zone means I can just hop on a plane/train and go to a variety of places. Why wouldn't I do that?
One of the things even our current government has managed to say reasonably clearly is that people from the EU who are living and working here legally today will be welcome to stay post-Brexit. They're quibbling over details, because that's what politicians and diplomats do, but I don't think anyone serious is suggesting that someone like your partner or her son should lose out here.
Similarly, there are some very nasty racist/xenophobic people in the UK, and sadly there always have been, and it looks like there are similar unpleasant undercurrents in various other places around the EU as well. However, exactly none of the Leave voters I know would be among those people. There seem to be plenty of reasons people voted Leave that have nothing to do with the immigration issue or somehow wanting to "throw out" citizens from other EU states. One group of people I talked to before the vote were even tending towards Leave for exactly the opposite reason: they had nothing against reasonable immigration, but didn't see why the EU should have an advantage over, say, someone similarly qualified or connected but from the US or Australia, and they wanted the whole immigration and visa system to be forced to update for the 21st century. (Possibly an optimistic view of the likely outcome, but a reasonable enough position in principle, IMHO.)
I am not ashamed to be British because of the Brexit vote, but I am sad about how it's been portrayed particularly in the media and by a rather unpleasant part of the Remain contingent online, because I think it makes some people feel far less welcome here than they still are by most Brits.
Like you said, there are plenty of other places full of smart people in Europe. I feel strongly about doing this as a political statement, or "voting with my feet". In Spain, brain drain is a serious problem that politicians pay attention to, so maybe it will give the UK's negotiators some pause when thinking about this.
good job
All cities that have another language than English, and don't have a quarter of the jobs in London.
>>> San Francisco or New York?
It's impossible to get VISA to live and work in the USA, for an European. Americans don't seem to realize how closed their country is.
Also, one can easily live in Berlin with just English (as long as you don't need to interact with government too much)
London gets correction on its growth, rest of the UK sligtly benefits by getting industries back which can no longer be served from within EU. Which will lead to slowdown or reversal of inequality growth.
"In particular, Northern Ireland (the UK’s poorest region), the North East (England’s poorest region) and the South West (Southern England’s poorest region) appear to be the most dependent on the ability of the UK to trade in goods with relatively few restrictions with other EU countries." [1]
[1] "UK regions, the European Union and manufacturing exports" http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Brie...
Though, it's hard to justify how Northern Ireland happen to become the UK’s poorest region, given how Ireland is more prosperous than the UK by the numbers.
The whole situation is hilarous IMO.
Because that's even harder. The American visa system is even more insane than the UK one. I'd love to move to California (if only for a couple of years) but it seems to be totally impossible when it comes to a visa.
Barcelona is a great city, but if you don't speak any Spanish and/or Catalan (and don't intend to learn) then good luck building a life there. Life is more than work. The ability of the general population to speak acceptable English in say Spain, is abysmal.
And it's like that in many EU countries. The same applies to Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam. Some cities and countries are easier to live in for English speakers, and the UK in combination with Ireland is probably a prime example.
I feel like the UK will be diminished, and that it will have deserved it.
(Currently working on emigrating.)
As an EU national who came to the UK 5 years ago, I'm in the process of preparing to leave in a year.
Already numbers show that even if the outcome is vague, a large percentage is alrady leaving ( mainly low-wage workers that are affected from a weak GBP )
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-24/immigrati...
Now imagine what happens when people realise they'll need a Visa or getting a new passport and rejecting their own. I'd certainly leave. My bet is that a 30~50% of EU nationals will leave within the next 5 years, which is a huge blow to London and the UK.
The country will be fine in the end. If anything, with how things are going, they'll probably end up either 1) not leaving (not that likely), or 2) end up with a very similar deal to what they have now (a lot more likely). But it will take years to figure things out and put it all together in a deal.
It makes no sense whatsoever for both sides to be mad at each other -- the EU and UK make good trading partners, part of the EU or not.
It doesn't. But that's the thing, the actors here are not in for the greater good like you. They have selfish micro-perspectives and all they care is maintaining power => votes. So for the particular UK government, priority is satisfying their voters. And those voters are ... not that smart or aware of how economies/countries work.
Again, look at what they say, and then look at what they do, since the campaign for Brexit started. Common sense is the thing that you will not find. Unfortunately.
> The country will be fine in the end.
Yeah, the sky will not fall. Everything will be "fine".
Amen. I was trying to decide between working in the UK or in Europe several years ago. I'm from a common wealth country so I assumed getting a UK visa would be cheap/easy.
No way José! The UK visa requirements were positively assinine in their requirements (everywhere you've visited the last 10 years, visa fees totaling over 800£). Requirements for someone with a university education and no criminal record or even a speeding ticket, which yes, you must also declare when applying.
It was basically an complicated and expensive process designed to catch you lying (intentionally or by omission) so they could deny you the visa.
I ended up going to a European country. Showed them my working contract and a copy of my university degree. 110€ and I had a 3 year work visa within 6 weeks.
The UK is insane for immigration.
Completely. I could immigrate to Germany for about 1/20th of the cost (in application and legal fees) that it is taking me to simply maintain my residency in the UK. And is despite being a native English speaker, Oxford graduate, resident here for 10 years, and founder of two UK companies.
By the time I get permanent residency here, I will have spent over £12,000 on application and legal fees, and hundreds of hours on paperwork.
Those in the UK who believe that they can remain an internationally competitive and attractive destination with this kind of visa regime are -- I'm sorry, there's no polite way to say this -- utterly fucking delusional.
In rapid succession I thought, why would China tie their visa fees to Chile? Are Chilean geopolitics closely aligned with China? Is there some complex macroeconomic formula that involves Chilean immigration patterns? Is China just trolling the West by randomly pegging their visa fees to Chile?
I should really pay more attention when scanning HN comments.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/01/home-office-...
as a third-worlder, I've started to keep a running spreadsheet of all visa fees (and associated costs) I have paid that I would not have to pay if I were a first-worlder. (Schengen application fees multiple times, UK visit, Hong Kong visit, UK student, etc.)
The only one I can let slide so far is the one for my student visa in the UK (especially the NHS coverage parts) as I've never paid income tax in the UK.
Reading the news and from rumors, companies are planning to move away or at least to keep London on hold and instead hire people somewhere else.
Brexit is also weakening the pound, which means that is much easier for European companies to be competitive with London salaries.
I've been in London for almost 4 years and I've a very good position so I'll probably stick around for a while and see what happens. In the meantime, I'm having a look for better opportunities somewhere else.
I voted for Brexit, but I did not vote based on immigration policy. In addition to seeing no major problems with the current immigration arrangements from an economic perpective, one of my grandfathers was an immigrant to the UK, and I'm glad to have my mixed ancestry, if nothing else it made my childhood more interesting.
The problem really is with the media. They've set out Brexit as a two-issue debate. The only two issues that get discussed are immigration and the economy. So if you voted for Brexit you're either a racist or an economic luddite. I bet you can't even guess why I'd vote for Brexit without being driven by those two factors. That's the level to which the debate has been simplified in the media.
So let me say this, speaking as a Brexit voter, you are welcome in this country. Don't let the media tell you why those 50% of voters (which wasn't 50% the UK population) voted the way they did, they haven't got a clue.
If you are curious about the reasons I voted to leave, look through my comment history around the time of the Brexit vote. I may explain it again later once I've made my point about the media's role in limiting the public debate.
This position was widely discussed in the British media [1]. Suggesting otherwise is bananas :-D
[1] A Google search for "Brexit sovereignty" gives plenty of articles, from across all newspapers.
One of the complaints I have about how the media has portrayed the issues is that it's conflated membership of the EU with being European, by focusing so heavily on the immigration angle. I'm still a European if I want to be outside of the EU. The EU is still mostly a trade organisation. Nobody calls people from the US anti-American if they criticise NAFTA (they are of course different arrangements, but certain comparisons can be made). Yet the portrayal of a European who is critical of the EU is of someone who is anti-European.
If you want a view that certainly wasn't emphasised in the Brexit debate, here are some of the comments of Tony Benn about the EU:
A rapidly changing first-world is producing a lot of losers - but they're not yet disenfranchised and many of them are even armed.
We're entering a new industrial revolution - a lot of white collar jobs and blue collar jobs are being disrupted or eliminated. For example every factory and driving job will disappear in our lifetimes, many office jobs will be disrupted. New jobs will be found, we'll be more productive, and the world will be better because of it, but history shows us that this sort of disruption and destroyed livelihoods leads to violence, revolutions and unrest. We will see a similar situation to the original industrial revolution.
I do think it is misguided and harmful to attempt to try to find scapegoats for structural changes in society (popular just now are immigrants, muslims, corporations or evil federal governments), which is why I disagree fundamentally with almost every argument advanced for Brexit (from foreigners are taking our jobs to the evil EU is out to crush our democracy). It will not end well when people don't see improvement in their life but suffer more, and wonder who is to blame if not immigrants.