u/Hefty_Tangelo9324

My girlfriend [F/19] and I [M/20] have been long-distance for over a year. Never met in person. I'm planning to fly to Manila to meet her in 2028, right after I graduate from university (fingers crossed). That's still about 2 years away.

The hard part is that her parents are very controlling. They do let her go out, but it's always with guilt, restrictions, or drama afterward. It wears her down.

What confuses and shocks me: They know about me. And somehow, they've agreed to let her meet me in Manila when I arrive. I'm grateful, but I don't get it. They control her daily outings, yet they're fine with her meeting a guy from overseas she's never seen in person? It doesn't add up. I'm happy but also worried, will they actually let her follow through when 2028 comes?

We love each other, but the long wait + her family's control + my confusion over their mixed signals is a lot.

Looking for advice:

• How to support a partner with controlling parents from far away
• How to survive a 2-year wait before the first meeting
• Has anyone else dealt with a confusing situation like this?

I’m writing this because the rhetoric is getting louder, and I want to move past the slogans. I want to talk about real human lives. Specifically, mine and my family’s.

Let me give you the full backstory, this is long, but just like other families, we want to be heard and understood, because a life isn’t a statistic, and a family isn’t a talking point.

Before moving to England, we lived in Delhi. Not the Delhi of diplomatic enclaves and air‑conditioned malls ,we lived in a crowded pocket of the city where low‑income housing meant a single bedroom that doubled as a living room, a kitchen you could barely turn around in, and a bathroom with a bucket and a tap that sometimes ran out of water. This area was full of apartment blocks stacked next to each other, roads improper, and streets full of garbage. Inside our “home”, my parents slept on one side of that one room. Money was a constant, grinding absence, my mother calculating every rupee after buying vegetables, a broken fan meaning sleepless summer nights. I was oblivious to the struggle, how could I even understand?

My father is an electrical engineer. In those years in India, he sent ninety percent of his salary to his own elderly parents, who had no savings. In our culture, you do not abandon them. So, ninety percent left our household before it reached our table. My parents - my father, my mother, and my older sister (I wasn't born yet) , lived on the remaining ten percent. Rent, food, medicine, everything. And they never borrowed money from anyone. Not a single rupee from relatives, friends, or banks. They would rather go without.

Before my sister and I were born, my mother was a schoolteacher, she taught English. She also did small‑scale clothes designing, stitching things at home to bring in a few extra rupees. Then she had my sister, and later me, and the teaching stopped. Raising children on a low salary while your husband travels take everything most.

Yet somehow my parents also managed to afford sending my sister to a private school, before I was born. They sacrificed everything: wore the same clothes for years, ate the cheapest meals, never bought anything non‑essential. Every spare rupee that wasn't going to my father's parents went to school fees. They believed education was the only way out.

But my sister was a very ill baby. Every week, my parents took her to the doctor, more expenses, medicines, consultations, sometimes emergency trips at night. They never skipped an appointment. My mother would bundle her up, wait for hours, then come home and cook dinner. Still, never borrowed a penny. In fact, they gave money despite earning so little, they were the providers. Never the receivers.

Then I was born. Four of us in that one‑bedroom flat. My sister still young, still unwell some weeks, me a baby. As if that wasn't hard enough, my father’s job required him to travel to certain places, such as: Japan, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan. Weeks or months away. My mother carried the daily weight of two young children, one frequently ill. But she wasn't completely alone: my maternal grandmother and auntie lived in the same building, a few doors down. They came over to help cook, watch us, keep my mother company. Still, my father was half a world away, and my mother held everything together. She never complained.

In 2008, my father got a job offer in the United Kingdom, a proper work visa, sponsorship, all by the book. I remember the plastic crates we packed, the long flight, the strange grey English morning, and central heating, a miracle after Delhi’s room heaters that smelled of burning dust.

We settled in a normal town. For the first five years, we lived in a small two‑bedroom flat, cramped, but compared to Delhi’s one‑bedroom, it felt like a palace. My father worked at the company, normal hours, as an electrical engineer. He started as a contractor, then permanent, then senior engineer. No night shifts, just a regular 9-5 job, but he gave it everything.

My mother took whatever work she could find part‑time retail, stacking shelves, cleaning. The hardest job she recalls was at an old persons’ home, long twelve‑hour shifts on the weekend, caring for elderly residents. She left before dawn, came home long after dark with swollen feet and an aching back. One day she came home early. She sat at the kitchen table, quiet. Eventually she told us an elderly woman, confused and frightened, had grabbed my mother by the hair and pulled her across the hallway. My mother didn't fight back. She finished her shift. But that was her last day at that job.

Later, when I was in Years 4 through 6 ,my mother volunteered at the primary school nursery. No pay. She just wanted to be helpful, to be around children. She helped with painting, snacks, little disagreements. By then her English was good enough, though she still spoke with an accent. The nursery staff loved her. I used to walk past the nursery corridor on my way to class and see her through the window, sitting on the floor reading a picture book to a circle of toddlers. That image, my mother, the former teacher and designer, the woman who had been pulled across a care home floor, peacefully on a nursery carpet helping children learn to read and write, that is who she really is.

I think about that now when I hear politicians talk about who belongs. Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain –, said: **“**If a foreign national is entirely unable to speak English, then they will be asked to leave. How can somebody possibly contribute if they cannot communicate? They can’t.”

To a point I understand what he is saying, but my parents have lived here over fifteen years. They pay taxes. They own a home. They raised two children – one doing a PhD, me in my first university year. My mother worked in various jobs and learnt English there. My father learned technical English on the job. They can both speak and understand English perfectly well for daily life, but they speak with an accent. Sometimes they pause for a word. Their English is clear and functional, but not “native.” Would Rupert Lowe tell my mother to leave? My father? That he “can’t contribute”?

I remember when I couldn't speak a word of English. At my first nursery in England, everything was alien. I only spoke Hindi. One teacher, I don't recall her name, would sit with me during playtime, showing me picture books, saying words slowly. She made me feel safe. I clung to her because she was the only person in that room who made sense.

My sister and I didn't learn English from textbooks. We learned from television – children's programmes, cartoons, bright colours and simple words. We sat cross‑legged on the floor of our small two‑bedroom flat and absorbed the language through stories and songs. By the time I started primary school, I could speak enough to get by. That's how integration really happens: a kind teacher, hours of CBeebies, a mother who volunteers at a nursery even after being hurt. Slowly, imperfectly, with accents and mistakes. My parents will never sound like they were born here. But they belong here.

Eventually, after more than fifteen years of National Insurance, income tax, council tax, VAT, my mother stopped working outside the home. My father is now a senior electrical engineer.

And this is important – we have been British citizens for years. We passed the Life in the UK test, did the citizenship ceremony, swore allegiance. My sister and I hold burgundy passports. On paper, we are as British as anyone born here.

I don't say any of this to brag. But I want to be honest about where we are now, as a contrast to where we started. After all those years, that tiny one‑bedroom in Delhi on the lowest end of life, the small two‑bedroom flat here, the sacrifices, the hair‑pulling, the nursery volunteering, my father travelling to Afghanistan. My parents have built a life that once seemed impossible. We now live in a five‑bedroom house, enough rooms that no one must share a bedroom anymore, a luxury I never knew growing up. There are two cars in the driveway, nothing flashy, just reliable ones that get us where we need to go. And my parents also own a second small property, though it's not fully paid off yet, they're still working on it, month by month. I know how this sounds to someone who is still struggling to make rent. I don't take any of it for granted. I remember the single bedroom in Delhi, the bucket and tap, the ten percent. I know that not everyone who works this hard gets this outcome, luck and timing played a part too. That's why I never look down on anyone who has less. I just want you to understand that this is what decades of sacrifice, of never borrowing a penny, of my mother being dragged across a care home floor and still going back to volunteer, of my father going to Afghanistan, can eventually look like. It's not a boast. It's a testament.

But here is the part that breaks my heart, and that most people never see. And this is the real story…

My father is the oldest of three brothers. He has two younger brothers, and most of his side of the family are, to be blunt, evil. They despise my father. I am very sure it is jealousy. He left India, built a successful career, raised educated children, while they stayed behind and accomplished nothing (some do live abroad such as USA, Canada and Australia, they are on good terms). They constantly compare their daughters to my sister, how they look, how they dress, what they have achieved. But my sister is far better in every way that matters, she is kind, hardworking, doing a PhD, and she doesn't measure her worth by outdated standards. These are backwards people. They believe women should not work, should stay at home, should clean dishes and serve men. But here is the hypocrisy: they want their own daughter to become a doctor. A working woman is fine when she is their daughter. But they would never allow their daughter‑in‑law to work, they would expect her to be a housemaid, cooking and cleaning for them. The same family that celebrates their daughter's career would trap another woman in the kitchen. We are so against that. My parents raised us to believe that a woman can be anything, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, whatever she wants. That is one of the many reasons they hate us. We represent everything they fear: a family that succeeded on its own terms, without borrowing a penny, without bowing to their backward rules.

My father's younger brother, the same one who constantly begged my father for money, who would accuse him of not doing enough for their parents even though my father sent money every month (he stopped sending money to him) is inheriting everything. My father's parents are giving all their land and money to this younger brother. When my father was sick with Covid, his brother was also sick but had no money or job (he is some sort of small-time singer/producer). My father, despite being barely able to move, sent him thousands of pounds. You know what happened? The brother's wife, my father's sister‑in‑law – said this to my mother: "I hope your brother is bedridden with a ventilator, struggling to breathe." She wished that on my mother’s brother (uncle) because he was hesitant to send even more money. A curse, that cuts just as deep. My father has been failed by his own parents, who watch this happen and do nothing. In fact, my grandfather suggest that he and his middle brother fund the renovations for when the younger brother ultimately inherits the house. Obviously, there’s a lot of context and backstory to this, I could leave this story for another thread, as its very complicated. Moving on…

Now my mother's side. Her parents, my grandparents, are good people in their own way, but they are trapped in old traditions. My grandfather is nearly ninety years old. He still works at a bank, every single day. He still rides his bicycle to work, even at his age. He is heavily respected in his area, everyone knows him, everyone speaks well of him. My grandmother survived cancer – she fought it and beat it, which is a miracle we are grateful for every day.

But when it comes to land and inheritance, they follow the old rules: everything goes to the sons. My mother's brother, my uncle, is a hot head. He refuses to give my mother even a small piece of land. Not an inch. I don't even think he works. Everything my cousins buy, their phones, their clothes, their bikes, comes straight from my grandparents' money. My grandfather, at nearly ninety, still earning, still riding his bike in the heat and dust, and his son spends his money on luxuries while refusing to share any land with his own sister.

When we visit India, we always bring gifts. We always give money. We never arrive empty‑handed. We do it because we love my grandparents, because we want to show respect, because that is how we were raised. But my cousins? They don't care about us. They barely speak to us. Only time we talk properly is when we go to the mall or eat food. I don't know if it's jealousy, maybe they resent that we left, that we have more, that my sister is doing a PhD while they spend their grandparents' money. Or maybe they just don't see us as family anymore. Either way, it hurts. My mother has been failed by her own brother, her own parents who won't stand up for her, our own cousins who hate us.

And here is another thing that separates my parents from so many other Indian families we know. Unlike others, families who claimed some sort of child benefits from the government, who had help from relatives back home, who received inheritances or gifts of land or money, my parents have never taken a single penny from the state that they weren't entitled to through taxes they paid. They have never claimed a benefit they didn't need. They have never asked for a handout. And they have certainly never received any help from their families back home. No inheritance. No land. No gifts. No safety net. Others we know had parents who gave them a house, or a lump sum, or paid for their children's education. My parents had nothing. They will have nothing. Everything we have, the five‑bedroom house, the cars, the private school my sister went to in India and private school I went here, the second property we're still paying off, came from their own hands, their own sweat, their own sacrifice. No one helped them. No one will help them.

So I ask you this: if Restore Britain wins and decides that people like my parents, who are citizens, taxpayers, volunteers, people who never borrowed a penny, who never claimed a benefit they didn't earn, who built everything from nothing, should be forced to leave, where exactly would they go? Back to India? To the parents who gave everything to their sons? To the brother who sent a hurtful threat? To the hot‑headed uncle who refuses to share a single inch of land? To the cousins who despise us? Would they be happy to see us? No. They would mock us. They would say, “See, you left and now you've been thrown out. You're nobody here too.”

My parents have sacrificed everything for a better future, for me, for my sister, for this country. They have no one else. This country is their home. It is the only home they have left. And the thought that a political party could take that away from them ,that they could be made to feel like unwelcome guests in the only place that has ever truly accepted them is unbearable. The reason I’m stressing these many times is because A LOT of people are against any sort of immigration, illegal of course, but legal too. I ask you this, if YOU had that opportunity to change your life, to “break the cycle”, wouldn’t you take it in a heartbeat? My father came from Kota Rajasthan, the primary problem with Kota, India's premier coaching hub, is an intense, high-pressure ecosystem that severely impacts student mental health, resulting in high rates of stress, burnout, and suicide. He used to sleep on dirty floors, barely eat, didn’t have money for a school uniform, but gifted, top of his class. Would regularly teach his seniors. He came from a student suicide ridden area, constant pressure to “escape” to perform and earn some sort of living.

Now, here’s where the paper version of a life misses something essential.

My sister and I went to a Church of England primary school. We were among a handful of brown children, maybe four or five in the whole school. Our family follows a different faith. At my school, non‑Christian children could opt out of the weekly church visit. Most did. I didn't. I was the only non‑Christian brown child who chose to go every week. I genuinely enjoyed it: the smell of old wood and candles, the rhythm of the prayers, the light through the stained glass. I learned the hymns, “Whole world in his hands,” “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” “My lighthouse”, and sang them with real enthusiasm. I was a sheep, then a shepherd, in the nativity play. I learned the Lord’s Prayer before any prayer from my own tradition.

My parents encouraged me. They said, “You go to that church, you sing those songs, you learn what your friends learn. That’s how you belong.” My sister joined the same school later, in Year 4, so she only had a couple of years before secondary school. She took part, but not as intensely. I had been there since Reception. Those hymns are woven into my earliest memories.

I'm not a Christian now. My beliefs are what they always were. But I understand Christianity, I respect it. I can walk into any Anglican church and know when to stand, sit, and what to say. That is integration: not erasing who you are but absorbing the culture around you because you want to.

My sister is now doing a PhD in aeronautical engineering. I am in my first year of university. My father still works as an engineer. My mother tends her garden. We are the kind of immigrant family politicians claim to want hardworking, integrated, tax‑paying, citizenship‑holding, hymn‑singing contributors. We have no one else. This is our home.

I'm not talking about asylum seekers or undocumented arrivals. I'm talking about rule‑followers, tax‑payers, oath‑taker. People who have no other country to return to because their own families have already abandoned them.

A hostile environment 2.0? We remember Windrush, people here for fifty years detained, denied housing, work, healthcare, deported over missing paperwork. Could that happen to citizens?

Targeting jobs and education? Just like my family, we are top workers and just want to keep our head down and keep ourselves to ourselves. If laws say, “employers must prefer native‑born” or “universities reserve places for British‑born” ,do, we lose everything? And what does “native‑born” mean when you have a passport but a Delhi birth certificate?

There are thousands like us. The nurse from Nigeria who worked through Covid. The software developer from Pakistan. The carer from the Philippines. Their children also sang hymns. They also pay taxes, mow lawns, complain about the weather. They have dark blue passports. Many never borrowed a penny, they just worked harder. Some were dragged across care home floors and still came back to volunteer. Many have been abandoned by their own families back home. This country is all they have. Just because they are a different colour, they deserve less of a right to be in a country where they built their life?

I have nothing against people who vote reform or restore, if Restore Britain wins, it won’t be “illegal” migrants they come for first. It will be us. The “legal” ones. The citizens. Because to a certain kind of politics, there is no meaningful difference between someone who arrived yesterday on a boat and someone who arrived twenty years ago with a work visa. We are all just “migrants.” Not really British.

I am a British citizen. I have a passport. I have a life here, friendships, education, memories, a future... And I am terrified that in 2029, all of that could become conditional. I’m not writing to start a fight. I’m writing because I want someone to explain what “Restore Britain” means

Does my family have to leave? Do we have to “restore” Britain by removing people like us? And if we are forced to leave, where would we even go? To the families who have already rejected us?

Because right now, I don’t feel restored. And I’m scared, here is another thing that nobody wants to admit. Look at the far‑right rioters. Look at the street thugs who call themselves patriots - and even the young children dragged along by their parents, taught to hate before they can tie their own shoelaces. They scream about "taking back our country" and "stopping the invasion." But who do they attack? They attack mosques. They attack Asian shops. They attack brown families in their homes. They throw bricks at people with dark skin. But here is the question they cannot answer: why aren't you targeting the white Europeans? There are millions of Polish, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish people living in this country. They are not "native" either. If you truly want England back, if you really want a country for "the English",  then why aren't you outside Polish shops? Why aren't you setting fire to French restaurants? Why aren't you beating up Italian families? You know why. Because they are white. Because they can blend in. Because when they speak English with an accent, you don't notice it the same way. Because your war isn't about nationality – it's about colour. You see brown skin and you see an enemy. You see white skin and you see someone who could be your neighbour, even if they just arrived last year and can barely speak a word of English. That is the ugly truth. Your "patriotism" is just racism dressed up in a flag. You don't want your country back – you want your country white. And that is why I know, even though I am a British citizen, even though I sang hymns in a Church of England school, even though my parents paid taxes for fifteen years and never borrowed a penny – you will never see me as one of you. Because to you, British isn't a citizenship. It's a skin colour. And that is the most un‑British thing of all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m writing this because the rhetoric is getting louder, and I want to move past the slogans. I want to talk about real human lives. Specifically, mine and my family’s.

Let me give you the full backstory, this is long, but just like other families, we want to be heard and understood, because a life isn’t a statistic, and a family isn’t a talking point.

Before moving to England, we lived in Delhi. Not the Delhi of diplomatic enclaves and air‑conditioned malls ,we lived in a crowded pocket of the city where low‑income housing meant a single bedroom that doubled as a living room, a kitchen you could barely turn around in, and a bathroom with a bucket and a tap that sometimes ran out of water. This area was full of apartment blocks stacked next to each other, roads improper, and streets full of garbage. Inside our “home”, my parents slept on one side of that one room. Money was a constant, grinding absence, my mother calculating every rupee after buying vegetables, a broken fan meaning sleepless summer nights. I was oblivious to the struggle, how could I even understand?

My father is an electrical engineer. In those years in India, he sent ninety percent of his salary to his own elderly parents, who had no savings. In our culture, you do not abandon them. So, ninety percent left our household before it reached our table. My parents - my father, my mother, and my older sister (I wasn't born yet) , lived on the remaining ten percent. Rent, food, medicine, everything. And they never borrowed money from anyone. Not a single rupee from relatives, friends, or banks. They would rather go without.

Before my sister and I were born, my mother was a schoolteacher, she taught English. She also did small‑scale clothes designing, stitching things at home to bring in a few extra rupees. Then she had my sister, and later me, and the teaching stopped. Raising children on a low salary while your husband travels take everything most.

Yet somehow my parents also managed to afford sending my sister to a private school, before I was born. They sacrificed everything: wore the same clothes for years, ate the cheapest meals, never bought anything non‑essential. Every spare rupee that wasn't going to my father's parents went to school fees. They believed education was the only way out.

But my sister was a very ill baby. Every week, my parents took her to the doctor, more expenses, medicines, consultations, sometimes emergency trips at night. They never skipped an appointment. My mother would bundle her up, wait for hours, then come home and cook dinner. Still, never borrowed a penny. In fact, they gave money despite earning so little, they were the providers. Never the receivers.

Then I was born. Four of us in that one‑bedroom flat. My sister still young, still unwell some weeks, me a baby. As if that wasn't hard enough, my father’s job required him to travel to certain places, such as: Japan, Zimbabwe, and Afghanistan. Weeks or months away. My mother carried the daily weight of two young children, one frequently ill. But she wasn't completely alone: my maternal grandmother and auntie lived in the same building, a few doors down. They came over to help cook, watch us, keep my mother company. Still, my father was half a world away, and my mother held everything together. She never complained.

In 2008, my father got a job offer in the United Kingdom, a proper work visa, sponsorship, all by the book. I remember the plastic crates we packed, the long flight, the strange grey English morning, and central heating, a miracle after Delhi’s room heaters that smelled of burning dust.

We settled in a normal town. For the first five years, we lived in a small two‑bedroom flat, cramped, but compared to Delhi’s one‑bedroom, it felt like a palace. My father worked at the company, normal hours, as an electrical engineer. He started as a contractor, then permanent, then senior engineer. No night shifts, just a regular 9-5 job, but he gave it everything.

My mother took whatever work she could find part‑time retail, stacking shelves, cleaning. The hardest job she recalls was at an old persons’ home, long twelve‑hour shifts on the weekend, caring for elderly residents. She left before dawn, came home long after dark with swollen feet and an aching back. One day she came home early. She sat at the kitchen table, quiet. Eventually she told us an elderly woman, confused and frightened, had grabbed my mother by the hair and pulled her across the hallway. My mother didn't fight back. She finished her shift. But that was her last day at that job.

Later, when I was in Years 4 through 6 ,my mother volunteered at the primary school nursery. No pay. She just wanted to be helpful, to be around children. She helped with painting, snacks, little disagreements. By then her English was good enough, though she still spoke with an accent. The nursery staff loved her. I used to walk past the nursery corridor on my way to class and see her through the window, sitting on the floor reading a picture book to a circle of toddlers. That image, my mother, the former teacher and designer, the woman who had been pulled across a care home floor, peacefully on a nursery carpet helping children learn to read and write, that is who she really is.

I think about that now when I hear politicians talk about who belongs. Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain –, said: **“**If a foreign national is entirely unable to speak English, then they will be asked to leave. How can somebody possibly contribute if they cannot communicate? They can’t.”

To a point I understand what he is saying, but my parents have lived here over fifteen years. They pay taxes. They own a home. They raised two children – one doing a PhD, me in my first university year. My mother worked in various jobs and learnt English there. My father learned technical English on the job. They can both speak and understand English perfectly well for daily life, but they speak with an accent. Sometimes they pause for a word. Their English is clear and functional, but not “native.” Would Rupert Lowe tell my mother to leave? My father? That he “can’t contribute”?

I remember when I couldn't speak a word of English. At my first nursery in England, everything was alien. I only spoke Hindi. One teacher, I don't recall her name, would sit with me during playtime, showing me picture books, saying words slowly. She made me feel safe. I clung to her because she was the only person in that room who made sense.

My sister and I didn't learn English from textbooks. We learned from television – children's programmes, cartoons, bright colours and simple words. We sat cross‑legged on the floor of our small two‑bedroom flat and absorbed the language through stories and songs. By the time I started primary school, I could speak enough to get by. That's how integration really happens: a kind teacher, hours of CBeebies, a mother who volunteers at a nursery even after being hurt. Slowly, imperfectly, with accents and mistakes. My parents will never sound like they were born here. But they belong here.

Eventually, after more than fifteen years of National Insurance, income tax, council tax, VAT, my mother stopped working outside the home. My father is now a senior electrical engineer.

And this is important – we have been British citizens for years. We passed the Life in the UK test, did the citizenship ceremony, swore allegiance. My sister and I hold burgundy passports. On paper, we are as British as anyone born here.

I don't say any of this to brag. But I want to be honest about where we are now, as a contrast to where we started. After all those years, that tiny one‑bedroom in Delhi on the lowest end of life, the small two‑bedroom flat here, the sacrifices, the hair‑pulling, the nursery volunteering, my father travelling to Afghanistan. My parents have built a life that once seemed impossible. We now live in a five‑bedroom house, enough rooms that no one must share a bedroom anymore, a luxury I never knew growing up. There are two cars in the driveway, nothing flashy, just reliable ones that get us where we need to go. And my parents also own a second small property, though it's not fully paid off yet, they're still working on it, month by month. I know how this sounds to someone who is still struggling to make rent. I don't take any of it for granted. I remember the single bedroom in Delhi, the bucket and tap, the ten percent. I know that not everyone who works this hard gets this outcome, luck and timing played a part too. That's why I never look down on anyone who has less. I just want you to understand that this is what decades of sacrifice, of never borrowing a penny, of my mother being dragged across a care home floor and still going back to volunteer, of my father going to Afghanistan, can eventually look like. It's not a boast. It's a testament.

But here is the part that breaks my heart, and that most people never see. And this is the real story…

My father is the oldest of three brothers. He has two younger brothers, and most of his side of the family are, to be blunt, evil. They despise my father. I am very sure it is jealousy. He left India, built a successful career, raised educated children, while they stayed behind and accomplished nothing (some do live abroad such as USA, Canada and Australia, they are on good terms). They constantly compare their daughters to my sister, how they look, how they dress, what they have achieved. But my sister is far better in every way that matters, she is kind, hardworking, doing a PhD, and she doesn't measure her worth by outdated standards. These are backwards people. They believe women should not work, should stay at home, should clean dishes and serve men. But here is the hypocrisy: they want their own daughter to become a doctor. A working woman is fine when she is their daughter. But they would never allow their daughter‑in‑law to work, they would expect her to be a housemaid, cooking and cleaning for them. The same family that celebrates their daughter's career would trap another woman in the kitchen. We are so against that. My parents raised us to believe that a woman can be anything, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, whatever she wants. That is one of the many reasons they hate us. We represent everything they fear: a family that succeeded on its own terms, without borrowing a penny, without bowing to their backward rules.

My father's younger brother, the same one who constantly begged my father for money, who would accuse him of not doing enough for their parents even though my father sent money every month (he stopped sending money to him) is inheriting everything. My father's parents are giving all their land and money to this younger brother. When my father was sick with Covid, his brother was also sick but had no money or job (he is some sort of small-time singer/producer). My father, despite being barely able to move, sent him thousands of pounds. You know what happened? The brother's wife, my father's sister‑in‑law – said this to my mother: "I hope your brother is bedridden with a ventilator, struggling to breathe." She wished that on my mother’s brother (uncle) because he was hesitant to send even more money. A curse, that cuts just as deep. My father has been failed by his own parents, who watch this happen and do nothing. In fact, my grandfather suggest that he and his middle brother fund the renovations for when the younger brother ultimately inherits the house. Obviously, there’s a lot of context and backstory to this, I could leave this story for another thread, as its very complicated. Moving on…

Now my mother's side. Her parents, my grandparents, are good people in their own way, but they are trapped in old traditions. My grandfather is nearly ninety years old. He still works at a bank, every single day. He still rides his bicycle to work, even at his age. He is heavily respected in his area, everyone knows him, everyone speaks well of him. My grandmother survived cancer – she fought it and beat it, which is a miracle we are grateful for every day.

But when it comes to land and inheritance, they follow the old rules: everything goes to the sons. My mother's brother, my uncle, is a hot head. He refuses to give my mother even a small piece of land. Not an inch. I don't even think he works. Everything my cousins buy, their phones, their clothes, their bikes, comes straight from my grandparents' money. My grandfather, at nearly ninety, still earning, still riding his bike in the heat and dust, and his son spends his money on luxuries while refusing to share any land with his own sister.

When we visit India, we always bring gifts. We always give money. We never arrive empty‑handed. We do it because we love my grandparents, because we want to show respect, because that is how we were raised. But my cousins? They don't care about us. They barely speak to us. Only time we talk properly is when we go to the mall or eat food. I don't know if it's jealousy, maybe they resent that we left, that we have more, that my sister is doing a PhD while they spend their grandparents' money. Or maybe they just don't see us as family anymore. Either way, it hurts. My mother has been failed by her own brother, her own parents who won't stand up for her, our own cousins who hate us.

And here is another thing that separates my parents from so many other Indian families we know. Unlike others, families who claimed some sort of child benefits from the government, who had help from relatives back home, who received inheritances or gifts of land or money, my parents have never taken a single penny from the state that they weren't entitled to through taxes they paid. They have never claimed a benefit they didn't need. They have never asked for a handout. And they have certainly never received any help from their families back home. No inheritance. No land. No gifts. No safety net. Others we know had parents who gave them a house, or a lump sum, or paid for their children's education. My parents had nothing. They will have nothing. Everything we have, the five‑bedroom house, the cars, the private school my sister went to in India and private school I went here, the second property we're still paying off, came from their own hands, their own sweat, their own sacrifice. No one helped them. No one will help them.

So I ask you this: if Restore Britain wins and decides that people like my parents, who are citizens, taxpayers, volunteers, people who never borrowed a penny, who never claimed a benefit they didn't earn, who built everything from nothing, should be forced to leave, where exactly would they go? Back to India? To the parents who gave everything to their sons? To the brother who sent a hurtful threat? To the hot‑headed uncle who refuses to share a single inch of land? To the cousins who despise us? Would they be happy to see us? No. They would mock us. They would say, “See, you left and now you've been thrown out. You're nobody here too.”

My parents have sacrificed everything for a better future, for me, for my sister, for this country. They have no one else. This country is their home. It is the only home they have left. And the thought that a political party could take that away from them ,that they could be made to feel like unwelcome guests in the only place that has ever truly accepted them is unbearable. The reason I’m stressing these many times is because A LOT of people are against any sort of immigration, illegal of course, but legal too. I ask you this, if YOU had that opportunity to change your life, to “break the cycle”, wouldn’t you take it in a heartbeat? My father came from Kota Rajasthan, the primary problem with Kota, India's premier coaching hub, is an intense, high-pressure ecosystem that severely impacts student mental health, resulting in high rates of stress, burnout, and suicide. He used to sleep on dirty floors, barely eat, didn’t have money for a school uniform, but gifted, top of his class. Would regularly teach his seniors. He came from a student suicide ridden area, constant pressure to “escape” to perform and earn some sort of living.

Now, here’s where the paper version of a life misses something essential.

My sister and I went to a Church of England primary school. We were among a handful of brown children, maybe four or five in the whole school. Our family follows a different faith. At my school, non‑Christian children could opt out of the weekly church visit. Most did. I didn't. I was the only non‑Christian brown child who chose to go every week. I genuinely enjoyed it: the smell of old wood and candles, the rhythm of the prayers, the light through the stained glass. I learned the hymns, “Whole world in his hands,” “Shine, Jesus, Shine,” “My lighthouse”, and sang them with real enthusiasm. I was a sheep, then a shepherd, in the nativity play. I learned the Lord’s Prayer before any prayer from my own tradition.

My parents encouraged me. They said, “You go to that church, you sing those songs, you learn what your friends learn. That’s how you belong.” My sister joined the same school later, in Year 4, so she only had a couple of years before secondary school. She took part, but not as intensely. I had been there since Reception. Those hymns are woven into my earliest memories.

I'm not a Christian now. My beliefs are what they always were. But I understand Christianity, I respect it. I can walk into any Anglican church and know when to stand, sit, and what to say. That is integration: not erasing who you are but absorbing the culture around you because you want to.

My sister is now doing a PhD in aeronautical engineering. I am in my first year of university. My father still works as an engineer. My mother tends her garden. We are the kind of immigrant family politicians claim to want hardworking, integrated, tax‑paying, citizenship‑holding, hymn‑singing contributors. We have no one else. This is our home.

I'm not talking about asylum seekers or undocumented arrivals. I'm talking about rule‑followers, tax‑payers, oath‑taker. People who have no other country to return to because their own families have already abandoned them.

A hostile environment 2.0? We remember Windrush, people here for fifty years detained, denied housing, work, healthcare, deported over missing paperwork. Could that happen to citizens?

Targeting jobs and education? Just like my family, we are top workers and just want to keep our head down and keep ourselves to ourselves. If laws say, “employers must prefer native‑born” or “universities reserve places for British‑born” ,do, we lose everything? And what does “native‑born” mean when you have a passport but a Delhi birth certificate?

There are thousands like us. The nurse from Nigeria who worked through Covid. The software developer from Pakistan. The carer from the Philippines. Their children also sang hymns. They also pay taxes, mow lawns, complain about the weather. They have dark blue passports. Many never borrowed a penny, they just worked harder. Some were dragged across care home floors and still came back to volunteer. Many have been abandoned by their own families back home. This country is all they have. Just because they are a different colour, they deserve less of a right to be in a country where they built their life?

I have nothing against people who vote reform or restore, if Restore Britain wins, it won’t be “illegal” migrants they come for first. It will be us. The “legal” ones. The citizens. Because to a certain kind of politics, there is no meaningful difference between someone who arrived yesterday on a boat and someone who arrived twenty years ago with a work visa. We are all just “migrants.” Not really British.

I am a British citizen. I have a passport. I have a life here, friendships, education, memories, a future... And I am terrified that in 2029, all of that could become conditional. I’m not writing to start a fight. I’m writing because I want someone to explain what “Restore Britain” means

Does my family have to leave? Do we have to “restore” Britain by removing people like us? And if we are forced to leave, where would we even go? To the families who have already rejected us?

Because right now, I don’t feel restored. And I’m scared, here is another thing that nobody wants to admit. Look at the far‑right rioters. Look at the street thugs who call themselves patriots - and even the young children dragged along by their parents, taught to hate before they can tie their own shoelaces. They scream about "taking back our country" and "stopping the invasion." But who do they attack? They attack mosques. They attack Asian shops. They attack brown families in their homes. They throw bricks at people with dark skin. But here is the question they cannot answer: why aren't you targeting the white Europeans? There are millions of Polish, Romanian, Italian, French, Spanish people living in this country. They are not "native" either. If you truly want England back, if you really want a country for "the English",  then why aren't you outside Polish shops? Why aren't you setting fire to French restaurants? Why aren't you beating up Italian families? You know why. Because they are white. Because they can blend in. Because when they speak English with an accent, you don't notice it the same way. Because your war isn't about nationality – it's about colour. You see brown skin and you see an enemy. You see white skin and you see someone who could be your neighbour, even if they just arrived last year and can barely speak a word of English. That is the ugly truth. Your "patriotism" is just racism dressed up in a flag. You don't want your country back – you want your country white. And that is why I know, even though I am a British citizen, even though I sang hymns in a Church of England school, even though my parents paid taxes for fifteen years and never borrowed a penny – you will never see me as one of you. Because to you, British isn't a citizenship. It's a skin colour. And that is the most un‑British thing of all.