Future uncertain for EU immigrants in Britain

Anna Woydyla, a restaurant worker from Poland who lives in London with her Polish husband and two teenage children, is one of many European Union workers anxious about whether they can stay in Britain.
Anna Woydyla, a restaurant worker from Poland who lives in London with her Polish husband and two teenage children, is one of many European Union workers anxious about whether they can stay in Britain.

LONDON -- Hundreds of thousands of European Union workers in Britain are fearful and confused over what happens next as their adoptive country begins the long process of unwinding its many ties to continental Europe.

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An entire class of cosmopolitan entrepreneurs, workers, students and others who have made the U.K. their home since Britain opened its borders to its EU neighbors now see their futures in limbo. The immigrants changed the face of Britain, turning London's Kensington neighborhood into a suburb of Paris, changing sleepy English towns such as Boston into Baltic enclaves, filling supermarket shelves across the nation with Polish lager and wiejska sausage.

For example, Anna Woydyla, a 41-year-old, Polish restaurant worker in London, said she faced a well of uncertainty: Would her two teenage children, who grew up in the United Kingdom, still qualify for loans to study at British universities? Would she and her husband, after 11 years of working here, have to sell the home they just bought? Leave their jobs? Leave their new country? Try to apply for citizenship?

"I personally cannot tell what's going to change for me," said Andrea Cordaro, a 21-year-old Italian student who compared the shock of hearing the referendum's result to the punch-in-the-gut feeling of flunking an exam. "I'll just have to keep my head up and hope for the best."

Laurence Borel, a 36-year-old digital marketing consultant from France, isn't waiting to find out what's coming next. She asked for her British passport in May after more than 15 years living in the country.

"I'll bet a lot of people are applying," she said, explaining that she'd been mulling the idea of a passport for years, but the referendum prompted her to act.

"I don't want to go back to France," she said. "My life is here."

At workplaces and schools across the country, managers have sent out emails to worried foreign staff members and students, assuring them that -- for now -- nothing has changed.

"The formal process for leaving the European Union will take at least two years," Oxford University said in one such statement. "Our staff and students can be assured that in the short term, we anticipate no disruption to employment or study."

Over the long term though, the lives of the estimated 3 million EU citizens living in Britain stand to change in several ways.

A survey commissioned by the Financial Times found that if Britain's current immigration rules were applied to EU nationals, the overwhelming majority would lose their jobs and be forced to leave the country -- catastrophic news for Spanish barristas, Romanian strawberry pickers, German investment bankers and the industries that rely on them.

The biggest effect may be on Poles, the largest group of foreign EU workers in the U.K. An estimated 850,000 people from Poland are now in the U.K., seeking wages and opportunities far beyond what they could expect in their ex-communist homeland, a flow so dramatic that Polish is now England's second-most-spoken language.

The fate of the Poles in Britain is such an important domestic issue in Poland that President Andrzej Duda vowed after the British referendum that Polish leaders will "do everything to keep the rights unchanged" in coming negotiations with British leaders.

"I trust that the British government will appreciate the contribution the Poles are bringing into the development of the British Islands, into their social and cultural life," Duda said.

Under British law, EU immigrants who have resided in the U.K. for more than five years can apply for permanent residency. In practice, however, few EU citizens have bothered as their passports already allow them to travel freely and easily access education, health care, pensions and other services in Britain.

Aware of the EU workers' anxiety, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had backed the failed "Remain" side, issued a special message Friday to the nearly one million European citizens living in London alone.

"As a city, we are grateful for the enormous contribution you make, and that will not change as a result of this referendum," he said. "You are very welcome here."

Information for this article was contributed by Frank Jordans, Danica Kirka, Jan M. Olsen and Monika Scislowska of The Associated Press.

A Section on 06/26/2016

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