EU referendum

Saturday, 23rd of April 2016

I have come to London, for now almost a month, with the intention to start my life as a newly graduate student. I remember the first few weeks when everything seemed new to me but at the same time somehow familiar, with flashbacks of what I had previously visited and seen on my last and only trip to the UK six years ago. I fell in love with this city all over again, its lights, its cultural diversity, its freedom, its creativity and I even have come to accept the inconstant weather.

When things got a bit more serious, when I stayed alone for the first night, when I saw myself having meetings with banks to open a new account, having meetings with internet companies, furnishing the house or calling to get my insurance number, I could not but witness that the burocracy took some of the magic of this beautiful city.

The high rents and prices and the fact of not having yet started to work, made my family spent foreign currency to pay for my little adventure here. I am in debt to them, no doubt.

I do not doubt of the opportunities that there are in this capital of the world, many have come here to start a life and got a job quite quickly, although most are older and with some more experience than myself. The UK has an open-mind set to give people the chance to start somewhere, even if at the bottom, there is an opportunity to rise up the ladder of work. It is a pragmatic system, you have to prove yourself but if you are not up for it, you are quickly dismissed, since there are millions who want your place, even if you are working simply as a barista or a cashier.

To integrate in this society is necessary to make a great effort, although I have a good level of English, I have learn that people here are interested in you for about a few seconds when they understand that your accent is different, but only to know where you are from. You have also people, and by people I actually mean men, that approach you in the middle of the streets, as it happened now more than a couple of times to me, but those have more than friendship on their minds. By norm, foreigners and british people don´t hang out between themselves and so both groups tend to get along with their own nationalities, which is a shame.

The UK is a country that highly profits from EU migration, both in the economical and cultural sense, but the sole idea of migration is still a sensitive issue, expecially in London, that has seen a huge change in the last couple of years.

By voting no, the country would be turning its back on its European values and that is why is my decision to leave the UK if that decision is ever to be made. In a globalised and democratic Europe, Britain does need to understand that it not ok to stand alone against all others, it is no longer time to play empires, kings and queens but to solve the modern day problems with global solutions, that help improve the development of our countries and give streght to the European Union.

We must stand for a unitated Europe and not a divided one by forcing emigrants that enrich this country´s culture and economy out of their new place of choice. Values and rights that were fought to be imposed after the World wars must continue to define Europe, that is the only way we can improve and continue the development of Europe itself.

From a girl standing for the European Union,

Mariana Fidalgo