A friend strongly opposed to immigration but explained his position and it seemed racism free to me.
He said it simply wasn’t fair. When he was young, nobody ever advised/told him that the future economy would involve large numbers of people from other countries freely being allowed to work and live in the UK, and with English being the lingua franca, these migrants from a young age very early on were exposed to English and and learned it well enough for it to be a non-problem with work and life in the UK. Neither did anyone tell him that he should learn a few foreign languages, so that later on in life he too could migrate to an EU country and work without any language barrier. Now it’s too late. He feels that he is too old to acquire the ability to learn and he feels he wouldn’t like to learn. Even if he did manage to learn one, because he’d be moving to a smaller jobs-market country, it would naturally be a lot harder to get a decent job there anyway, and at the same time the jobs market in the UK is also more difficult because of the number of people chasing those jobs. He’s also not happy that he was never given any say in the matter of the free movement of people He said what was signed up for in the 70’s bears little was resemblance to today. The “lower economy” countries (from which most immigrants come, e.g. Poland) were never part of the “Common Market” then; It was the ‘high economy’ counties that the EEC.
Why would he be forced to live in a different culture with different unpleasant weather when he’s happy with established/traditional)English culture (and it’s weather)? Why should he placed in a position whereby any children he had might not get as good an education overseas. Same for health care provision and so on. If indeed he had to work overseas, why must he have to choose from ‘lessrrer universities’ or health service, sports facilities, watching cricket or the league team of his choice. Why should he simply lay down and accept all the imposiitions the EU is forcing upon him. Why can’t he be allowed to just be the way he was.
I found his points very worthy of sympathy and I could understand very well why he wanted greater immigration control and it didn’t seem racist at all, but that’s the way pro-Brexiters were usually portrayed – as racist insular biggots who simply didn’t like foreigners in the UK. I must admit, those thoughts crossed my mind too once in a while.
A family member voted for Brexit too, saying they disagreed with the EU greavy train.
So, although Brexit is over a year old already, don’t see all Brexiteers as racist bigots.