I very much enjoyed the multiculturalism and there are plenty like me. The period from around 2005 onwards was for me a great time. European housemates, colleagues and cultural influence. It felt good to be part of something that crossed cultural boundaries. We've lost a lot.
I think sometimes the unwelcoming voices are the loudest and are what sticks with us. We'll miss having people like you.
Understandable for you to feel offended by the situation though.
The emotions are still raw. I have good friends and a couple of amazing mentors who I left behind. What a total, utter mess this is...
I assume you are part of an economically privileged group, but to someone who has just lost his job to a pole, the coolness of "european cultural influence" does not mean shit.
Never in history did it turn out to be true when poor people's problems were blamed on some minority. In every instance I can think of the results were disastrous for the minority as well as the poor who were pitted against them.
Rees-Mogg (an avid supporter of Brexit) famously said it would take 50 years to see any benefit from Brexit.
In fact, the areas of the UK with the highest number of immigrants voted Remain (and just in case, EU immigrants were not allowed to vote in national plebiscites).
PS: those xenophobic/racist groups are very very active now after Brexit. They've always had that hatred, it's just now very visible. I'm driving a European car(left side wheel) with UK plates since 2007 (it's a good German car), and it doesn't feel like minority, road rage, looks, shouting etc when they see the left side wheel[after Brexit] is just amazing. Just few days ago woman was shouting in a car park: "I've passed my driving licence here [pointing finger to the ground, repeating multiple times]" with the comments that I shouldn't be driving in her country. Last year I've bought dash cam which I haven't felt was ever needed before and started reporting those hate crimes one by one with the video evidence. And police, fortunately react very swift and seriously to those.
PPS: Europeans shouldn't feel that bad and think that everything is targeted towards them, UK has a huge national racism problem anyways, even for those whose parents are brits, who were born and lived here their whole life. Most recent big example was EURO 2020 finals (football) and the racist comments in twitter / press / public the players received who missed the penalties. And it's not a single incident, it's just a more public example of part of multiple happening every day in peoples lives.
PPPS: there are many brits who voted to leave EU, but doesn't have any hatred towards EU migrants, they have just voted against European Union as an institution and wanted UK to not be part of it. The votes were not targeted only to migrants by some people, but the majority yes. I can't find that ad anymore anywhere (maybe someone has a link?), where ITV, Channel X and others were showing NHS before Brexit: full of migrants from EU in their sport suits and British elderly who doesn't have where to sit and need to wait long lines, because of EU migrants, and then life after Brexit, where NHS is just empty, welcoming every briton, no need to wait and elderly are happy. Those who wondering: nothing have changed in NHS, the situation is even worse now, because UK is short on nurses in NHS, who were largely EU workers.
Meh, what you heard were mostly just the voices of a loud and stupid minority, not he norm in the UK. I don't see any reason to feel offended by that vote result, it's nothing personal.
As an Eastern European myself, I found the UK to be the least discrimating and most fair towards immigrants than the other rich European nations when it came to glass ceilings for foreigners in their society.
Eastern Europeans, and foreigners in general for that matter, hold many top positions in companies in the UK, whereas this is much less accepted in traditional German, Austrian, Swiss, French, etc. companies for example, who are far more elitist and openly discriminatory sometimes [1].
More like 52% isn't it? Granted not every one who voted leave did it to keep out the Poles. But it makes you wonder how many did and which smiles at the grocery store are forced...
Do you seriously expect you deserve genuine smiles from all service employees? And that if some don't do it it must be because of your nationality?
Did it occur to you that maybe some don't smile because they work shit dead end jobs, for shit pay, dealing with shit people as customers every single day for months/years on end?
You're correct it was 52% - however that does not represent 52% of all the public - it represents 52% of the public who turned up to vote. Obviously that still carries the majority verdict for the referendum.
There were 45.5 million people registered to vote in the referendum in 2016 and 28% of those registered voters didn't bother to turn up to vote. The leave vote equalled 17.4m voters. The remain voters equalled 16.1m voters. 13 million people didn't care enough to vote.
(western European here)
That's preposterous.
The funny and insanely ironic thing is, I know many Eastern European and other immigrants in the UK who became British citizens and also voted to leave just to thin out the competition they faced for jobs and real estate.
They had nothing against any nationality, but their narrow minded views and primitive survival instincts kicked in knowing there are many like them out there wanting to immigrate just as they did before and made them pull the ladder after them since they assumed that less immigration will give them more leverage in the future.
The irony is not lost on me, but people are rarely rational when voting and mostly do it on emotions.
"Need" in what way? Sure they didn't need it to live and work there, but traveling with a British Passport gives you way more liberties abroad and less discrimination than some EE ones (I lost count on how often police, public and private institutions in Western Europe would treat me like shit when I showed my EE ID vs my friends with Western nationalities).
And since getting a British Passport is basically a ruber stamp once you satisfy all conditions (which are very simple to meet) and it doesn't force you to renounce your existing nationality like some other countries do, most got it as their second passport.
I think a lot of people underestimate the value of having a powerful passport and what a difference that can make on your experience as a foreigner abroad (and inland as well).