With only 10 days to go until we are due to vote on our future membership in the European Union, let me throw in my two pennies’ worth. Oh, am I allowed to say “we”? You see, like my friend Lena (read her blog about Brexit), I’m an EU immigrant, and since I haven’t naturalised yet (though I’m working on it), I’m not allowed to vote. But the thing is, I’ve established my life here, I’ve permanent residency (meaning the government can’t kick me out anymore), I will naturalise in the near future, and for all I know I will stay remain here. And even if only half of that were the case, the vote would still affect me as much as anybody else in this country. So I reckon it’s fair enough I chime in; like it or not.
A note upfront. The below points are all rather extensive. If you are not interested in the background story, just read the last paragraph of each item in the list and you’ll get a good summary of what I intend to say. Also, they are not complete in any sense. They are just the five things that had the most direct impact on my own life, so this may be somewhat different (or not) to those factoid lists of EU membership benefits.