Thread by @helenyg

I was roaming on my neighbourhood in London my thoughts went to how we can see a place differently when you are a tourist or a resident. It was December 2010 when I visited London for the first time. It was magic.

Snow was covering the Hyde Park; the Christmas spirit was everywhere, and the smell of mulled wine and warm chestnuts took the air in Southbank.

Never will forget the emotion when the Big Ben (today Elizabeth Tower) appeared in front of my eyes. It impossible to describe the emotion to be on the doors of the Mother of Parliaments

and bow to the most democratic institution on Earth (at least was what I thought then). Thames and the London Eye sparkled in a cold, sunny morning while I was walking in the Westminster Bridge trying to visit the Imperial War Museum (my son loves war history).

I ate in pubs, drank pints of beer and begun to understand my American accent made difficult to the Starbuck guy understand I wanted a bottle of water. But all was fun. All was magical. All was memorable.

It wasn’t on my plans move to London. My destination in 2011 was Istanbul first, later my family and I would move to Zurich. However, my son wellbeing was much more important and my first concern that finally we end up moving to London.

I have been living in London for almost nine years, the magic has gone, substituted by the cold reality.

The first year was a nightmare. Rough landlords and Real Estates pushed us to a one bedroom flat in a very polluted area. The rent was expensive, almost 1,600 £ per month in a cracked and cold flat.

The hardship was created in the first instance because we didn’t have a job in UK (even we had having money in the bank) and not precious address to rent a better place. But, soon my husband found a job and life became better.

However, in all our exploration in London what caught our attention was the state of degradation the city was. You could cross with rats and garbage in the City. Or tripped in dirty near the entrance of a restaurant.

The pubs were full of drank people and most of time when we entered one everybody looked to us as we were aliens. We laugh.

One year later we moved to another place, more comfortable/ The three-bed flat wasn’t a middle-class paradise, but at least had heaters, a big kitchen and finally I left my sofa for a bed.

Life begun to change. I release two books; my husband got a top job and my son was happy at school. In 2012 the Olympics made London a festive place, cleanness and tidiness were the order and the restaurants, cafes, store, shopping were full of well manner and smiling people.

But the Olympiad passed, leaving the people struggling to live with the austerity the new government imposed

2015 was the biggest and most important moment in British politics. The Tory Party won an election (until today I have my doubts how) against all odds (Labour was in front until days before the election day).

It was the exact moment I notice I was entering in the British politics framework. I wanted to understand why, a Referendum was promised, why British people disliked EU nationals so much and more, why non-EU people also disliked EU nationals.

What I saw was a pile of lies, prejudices, disinformation. A farce as British people use to say. A farce that is costing me since 2016 nightmares, making my son unease and tense about his future.

A farce built over prejudices, fear, lies. The Leave side broke the law, used psychological tact, overspend and create an atmosphere of hate and xenophobia I never had seen, even when I lived in Brazil.

The Uk I had bought as a liberal, enlightened and welcoming country was showing its real face and I was scared (I am still).

Soon I was seeing the same background we saw in countries as Argentina, Brazil, or in Africa. A government create austerity with the excuse to reduce debts. The country had been suffering from the 2008 crises and people was afraid of the future.

The media – not only in the UK but in Europe also – was playing the game of the “immigration invasion’,

ISIS had become a real threat to the west, and the British broadcasters, eager for audience, decided to sell the idea EU immigration was to blame for the problems in NHS and schools.

More, they decided that the austerity and other problems ruined Britain was EU fault and the scenario was created to fuel hatred, prejudices, supported for misinformation and lies.

Soon, the place I was calling my home, from where I came running form a country that had no place for people like me, was again being demonised, putting on shoulders all the mistakes and misgoverns happened for decades.

How can we be happy if our home is purging us? How can you trust, if you became the pariah, the unwanted, the ‘citizen of nowhere’, ‘the queue jumper’, the robber of jobs and places in schools and hospitals?

From one side, British people on the countryside was pointing to EU as guilty for the failure UK was enduring. The other side, non-EU nationals were complaining about the Freedom of movement EU nationals enjoyed.

What nobody has understood is about how the EU worked, how Freedom of Movement worked, how it had been benefiting the UK and British people.

The first point is the UK had a very special relationship with the EU, the deal they had was crafted specially for Britain, nobody had something similar. Second, the UK always had tool to curb immigration from EU but decide not used, why?

Because immigration from EU countries had inject billion in the economy. Most EU nationals speak their mother tong, English and may time one more language. But, apart all this, the Freedom they enjoy in the UK was reciprocated by all other 27 countries.

British people could live, work, and retire whatever they wanted without visas, health insurance. They were seeing by the other countries governments as locals. Freedom of Movement was reciprocal.

That’s the point non-EU nationals should understand. Their countries don’t have the same immigration policies the EU countries shared between them.

If they have to get a visa (normally expensive) to work in the UK, the British people need to get visas to work on their country. If they need visa to visit the UK, British people will need visa to visit their country.

The non-EU National need healthy insurance and private retirement insurance, British people living on their country will need the same. There is no prejudice against non-EU nationals, it’s only countries relationships, agreements, politics.

Now, we are being forced to register for a so-called ‘settle status’, something totally non transparent, created over the ‘hostile-environment’ policy hunting immigrants up and down the country and making them feel like carrying a plague or robbers in their own home.

There are people living here for 20, 30 40 years being denied the right to stay on their home.

The narrow mentality and the law-breaking Leave campaign that gave us Brexit, never was concerned about ‘the people’. The workers, the elderly, the children from who they are robbing opportunities. Why they did that? For money and power.

Now, the Mother of Parliament is being shouted. The great democratic country is being dragged to a dark future. There isn’t a clear path how to stop this.

There isn’t a clear path how to heal the country from the hatred, fear and lies spread in news, television and now, online. The worse of human nature was freed. Now, how to rebuild trust, kindness, fearless, and the country?