Interview with Sonia

00:58"
My name is Sonia Zelenická and I'm 21 years old.
No I live here all the time so my permanent home is here in Kent. I travel to Poland and
Europe almost about 6 times a year so quite a lot.
Yes yeah 100 yeah definitely I don't call Poland home my home anymore I call England my
home.
No I'm not very I'm not into politics I'm not into brexit as much as other people I know I'll be
affected because I'm not a British citizen. The amount of times even before brexit I tried to
sort out a British citizenship is very difficult it's a lot of money and it's hard especially for
people who are students over about costs £1,500 vacation and you have to have
references, the references have to be British people who have known you for over 5 years
so it's very difficult specifically now that brexit has happened it's become even more
difficult so kind of just giving up on that whole situation I don't really read into it because it
just frustrates me so I just wait and see what happens and that is it.
Yeah it is definitely.

News usually I get from friends and family and I don't usually go online and look there's a
lot of people that just have horrible opinions so I'd rather just not that usually if I do look
online look on Twitter and sometimes on Facebook it will pop up but other than that just
friends and family.

Hmm.. That's an interesting question I think it's funny because Facebook largely a lot of
younger people on there but then we realise that not a lot of young people voted for Brexit
there's a lot of older people also using Facebook to send these messages and
propaganda etcetera I think is effective but not as effective as it is for older people cos they
get very angry especially when I walk around the street and I start speaking Polish older
people go nuts at me and I'm going back at them because I'm just crazy. In a sense of you
know you can't tell me to speak my own language and you know they start screaming at
me saying I'm in England I should speak English I said but I can speak English I'm fluent if
I was speaking English you wouldn't know that I'm Polish so just shush and I just carry on
and carry on but yeah.

You can't really stop the internet so can you.

Do you know what each To Their Own if they're going to listen to it then that's up to them
whatever happens happens I just kind of don't bother anymore I just flow with it.

I don't I'm not bothered with it at all I don't as I said I don't read into it I don't try and read
into it because it just frustrates me and gets me angry so I kind of stay out of it, whatever
happens, I'm going to deal with it basically that's my... (background chatter interrupts)
The current political climate and as I said before I'm not really into politics I don't really
read into it and it just frustrates me I don't bother anymore it used to be where I did read up
on it every single day Facebook Twitter BBC News all day and like what's happening
what's happening but nowadays I know that I'm not going to get British citizenship I'm not
going to pass the life in the UK Test I'm not going to have £1500 i've just accepted it and
just let it go just waiting to see what happens.

I'm with that whole situation so other permanent residency had that done in mmxi expires if
you want to do it again there's so much paperwork it's ridiculous it's like they don't want
you to get it so with the permanent residency you need at least 10 years of what you know
holidays every single holiday that you went on leaving the UK you have to basically put
forward where you've worked for you know if you done anything bad in the United
Kingdom for the past 10 years they have to know absolutely everything you make it very
difficult so that has expired probably not even going to bother with that either I'm just
seeing how I lived in this country for 15 years now and it shouldn't be like this for myself
I've called up the home office they are not helpful whatsoever they don't care so yeah.
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