The Post-Brexit Thread

[ad hoc]

Loads of Romanians who live elsewhere in Europe do this. So they come home from Spain (for example) in the summer with their kids who have no language to talk to their grandparents in.

[Nefertiti2]

This is not " an administrative cock-up' This is a concerted effort over several years to make life as difficult as possible for those considered unwanted here.

See also Windrush. Hostile environment. The threats to EU citizens resident here completely legally - and who were explicitly promised that their status wouldn't change are just another version of this.

[ad hoc]

On other Brexit news, the UK was rejected from joining something called the Lugano Convention over the weekend. This is something to do with legal jurisdictions, which I don't entirely understand, but the Lugano Convention itself is about allowing non EU members to accede to this. The UK says they want to but the EU has told them to sling their hook. I don't know quite what this means, but it seems to have caused some consternation,

[Sporting]

Loads of Romanians who live elsewhere in Europe do this. So they come home from Spain (for example) in the summer with their kids who have no language to talk to their grandparents in.

Luckily, the few Romanians I know here haven't taken this route. But I know a Hungarian and an Ecuadorian, resident in Ireland, who took the decisiom to only speak in English to their daughter.

Needless to say, us lot have not made the same mistake.

[Nefertiti2]

On other Brexit news, the UK was rejected from joining something called the Lugano Convention over the weekend. This is something to do with legal jurisdictions, which I don't entirely understand, but the Lugano Convention itself is about allowing non EU members to accede to this. The UK says they want to but the EU has told them to sling their hook. I don't know quite what this means, but it seems to have caused some consternation,

The Convention determines which court will hear a trans border dispute

The Lugano Convention (“the Lugano”) determines which countries may hear cross-border disputes between the 27 EU member states, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland in civil and commercial cases. Additionally, the Lugano also ensures recognition of judgments across the member states, which in turn significantly reduces legal costs for individuals and small business seeking legal redress outside their home countries.

As the UK officially left the EU in January 2020, its membership in the Lugano ended in December of last year. EU officials have since rejected UK’s application to rejoin.


The City of London Corporation highlighted the importance of rejoining the Lugano, noting that a big increase in cross-border disputes was expected after the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses and individuals seek to recover their losses. However, while the other Lugano members participate to a moderate extent in the EU’s internal market of free movement of goods, services, capital, and people, the UK no longer does.

[Discordant Resonance]

Meanwhile, an account that tends to be well-informed on Brexit affairs tweets:

https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1417119436989947906

[Antepli Ejderha]

Loads of Romanians who live elsewhere in Europe do this. So they come home from Spain (for example) in the summer with their kids who have no language to talk to their grandparents in.

In my experience working with these families there's still a belief that children cannot cope, schools telling them that they need to speak only the language of the country they are in and also children rejecting their mother tongue. Parents speak in one language, the children respond in another.

[Antepli Ejderha]

I've written, in some length, about my experiences in trying to get a visa for my Turkish wife so that we could settle in London in 2012. Without the direct intervention of an OTFer we would not have got here and certainly our plans to study would have been ruined.

The default policy is to refuse, is to find fault in documents and to cause distress to the applicant and their family.

The Windrush scandal clearly shows that children brought to the UK with no knowledge of their country of origin and no family support there are being deported or refused reentry to the UK on a regular basis. They are losing every single right that they've earned through years of work based on a clearly followed policy called the hostile environment.

We've become a truly racist country lacking in empathy for others who didn't have the good fortune to be born to British citizens in the UK. If you are born abroad you only get the passport and that's it.

There but by the grace of God go I.

[Discordant Resonance]

Luckily, the few Romanians I know here haven't taken this route. But I know a Hungarian and an Ecuadorian, resident in Ireland, who took the decisiom to only speak in English to their daughter.

Needless to say, us lot have not made the same mistake.

In practice, she'll be saturated in exposure to English through various media and interaction with friends, so the concern seems misplaced - admittedly, some studies suggest English proficiency scores as measured by PISA are lower among L2 speakers than among natives, but the benefits of bilingualism are clear.

[Tactical Genius]

I know many foreigners who never spoke to their kids in their native languages, mistakingly thinking that they could only cope with one tongue.

Add my family to this.

I assume it was so my parents to speak to each other and friends without asking the kids to leave the room. Which was helpful as my mum was a notorious gossip

[Patrick Thistle]

I know two sisters with a Welsh speaking mother and an English speaking father. One daughter learned Welsh from mum and is bilingual. Dad insisted the other daughter only learned English because he was fed up being excluded from conversations. (He couldn't learn Welsh because... well who knows?)

One of his daughters grew up deeply resentful.

[Antepli Ejderha]

We're raising our daughter bilingually and I'm happy for her to have both languages, and hopefully both cultures. Ideally we'd like her to learn more languages as she seems happy to repeat some of the things she's picking up from other people.

I don't get why you wouldn't give this advantage to your children.

[ursus arctos]

The most common reasons in my experience are the questionable parenting advice and familial opposition mentioned above. It can be a particularly fraught issue when one parent has little or no facility in the other parent's first language.

[john the revelator]

Investors Chronicle take on Brexit, they were not in favour of leaving the EU and have regularly flagged the irrational trade elements but this is a hard nose, realpolitik piece.
Basically if the UK govt is going for hard Brexit then they have to go the whole hog.
For the City, it could mean more trade but more risk and it's not clear who will carry the cost.
Crisis in Northern Ireland is part of the price.

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk...pay-the-price/

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Loads of Romanians who live elsewhere in Europe do this. So they come home from Spain (for example) in the summer with their kids who have no language to talk to their grandparents in.

I've mentioned here before, but my former nextdoor neighbour Edina (from cluj) spoke to her daughters only in romanian, and had a romanian au pair (though she had been living in Spain from the age of five) and the husband Scott, From Last of the mohicans country in upstate NY, spoke to them in english. So when I asked you for the romanian translation of "Hedge fairy" I may well have been the first male the two year old had ever heard speaking romanian. She nearly collapsed. Those kids have moved back to Ann arbor, where I'm not sure about the number of romanians, but having those two languages will enable them to pick up a load of new languages in school.

[ursus arctos]

As befits the home of a major research university with 50,000 students, there will definitely be a Romanian speaking community in Ann Arbor

[Sporting]

It can be a particularly fraught issue when one parent has little or no facility in the other parent's first language.

My German is rubbish but I'm perfectly cool in this respect.

[ursus arctos]

Yes, but you are perfectly cool in many respects.

Many other parents (especially fathers in my experience) are not.

[S. aureus]

One of my exes in Texas (not all my exes live there) is of Mexican ancestry - all her grandparents moved to Texas in their lifetimes. Her parents didn't speak Spanish to her at all, and discouraged her from speaking it, because when they were at school they were beaten for speaking it. She was always very jealous of her friends who could speak Spanish well.

[Flynnie]

One of my exes in Texas (not all my exes live there) is of Mexican ancestry - all her grandparents moved to Texas in their lifetimes. Her parents didn't speak Spanish to her at all, and discouraged her from speaking it, because when they were at school they were beaten for speaking it. She was always very jealous of her friends who could speak Spanish well.

Which comes with a double penalty because I'm sure she has gotten shit from other Mexicans/Mexican-Americans for not speaking Spanish.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

As befits the home of a major research university with 50,000 students, there will definitely be a Romanian speaking community in Ann Arbor

well I hope they enjoy their playdates with post-doctorate researchers so!

[ursus arctos]

Post docs have children too

I looked up some information. There is a Romanian Orthodox Church in Ypsilanti, the next town over, and the Episcopate for the entire country in in Jackson, 35 miles to the west.

[San Bernardhinault]

One of my exes in Texas (not all my exes live there) is of Mexican ancestry - all her grandparents moved to Texas in their lifetimes. Her parents didn't speak Spanish to her at all, and discouraged her from speaking it, because when they were at school they were beaten for speaking it. She was always very jealous of her friends who could speak Spanish well.

My understanding is that this is also true of a lot of Tejanos who, while being of hispanic/latino descent often speak little to now Spanish at all.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Post docs have children too

I looked up some information. There is a Romanian Orthodox Church in Ypsilanti, the next town over, and the Episcopate for the entire country in in Jackson, 35 miles to the west.

Sounds great. Not sure how religious they are though! I wonder what it is that draws people to certain areas like that. You wouldn't necessarily expect parts of michigan to have a big romanian community. Though Wikipedia says there's 120K romanian americans in michigan, and 165k romanians in the whole country.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The default policy is to refuse, is to find fault in documents and to cause distress to the applicant and their family.

I think this is key. As a white male young (then) Canadian immigrant I made mistakes too. After being landed for two years, I returned to the UK for a year and a half. What I didn't know was that if I left Canada for more than six consecutive months (IIRC) in the first five years of residency my status would be voided. Fortunately in pre-internet days there would have been no straight-forward way of the feds finding out, but these days that likely wouldn't be the case, especially if I wasn't a white male. A few years later I forgot my immigration card after a trip abroad. I was detained on my return. Fortunately I remembered my port of entry and date of entry (more or less.) The immigration officer phoned Ottawa (at midnight Vancouver time... the government never sleeps!) and verified my information. Would she have bothered if I was black, or brown, or just left it for the next shift to deal with?

So, yeah, most of us try and follow the rules as we understand them, but for one reason or another make mistakes. Government employees do the same (they're people too.) But how generous we all are in understanding that, and taking it into account is the issue. If the government default is applying rules in an inflexible way then it builds resentment at best, and real suffering at worst. Blaming the victim only creates distrust, stress and anger.