I have been working in London for 4.5 years now. I work in telecommunications and provide consultancy to all around the world. I work with almost all large telecom companies in the world. I have a master's and doctorate earned in the US and moved to London to advance my career in companies with a global reach, as well as for personal reasons. Today, I am an important part of my company in a managerial position.

I am not a member of the EU and do not hold a "privileged" passport. My son is born in London. He doesn't have a UK passport, either, because he's not entitled to one.

I have no right to access public funds; this mainly means no benefits. I pay all of my taxes in full. Due to my nationality, I even report to the police whenever my visa needs to renewed or if I move to a new address; I find this a bit insulting but take it on the chin. I understand that security matters.

I am happy to be in the UK; it's a great place to work as it is the business capital of the world. Many global companies are HQ'ed here and provide jobs to many people from many nationalities depending on their skills. My nationality and ties with the business in certain parts of the world, for instance, helps contribute hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to a particular UK business.

Hoping that I have been able to draw an image of myself needed from an "immigration" perspective, I want to describe two things that happened to me in the last year alone:

1- My parents came to visit my family here - to see their grandson actually. We were taking my son to the zoo. I was walking arm in arm with my father (who is blind) and talking to him in a different language than English. A person in a senior scooter and his wife began to say "look at these fecking immigrants, coming here and taking all the money; I wish you just fecked off to where you came from". At first, I didn't even sense that this was about me and my family. Then when I realized that it was, I was terrified. I was probably contributing to his benefits and his scooter, but he was fuming at me. My wife pinched my arm to stop me from reacting and I did not. Given that we were at a red light waiting to cross, I took a good one minute of "feck off"s in different forms.

2- I was in the bus going from Waterloo to Aldwych early morning, peak-time. My wife was reading news about that child whose parents kidnapped her for proton therapy. I said, "good for the parents, takes a lot of guts but you do whatever's needed for your child". Then my wife said "it's unbelievable they don't have it in London yet and they do in the Czech Republic" (or sth like that). I said to her, "yes, I hear that there are resource allocation issues in England; where money should be invested in NHS vs. too many benefits that are misallocated. Plus medical innovations are always a tricky thing with legacy practices winning due to liability issues".

A guy standing above me abruptly said with the most sarcastic of smiles, "I presume you're English?". I said "no, but I think I should prepare for an immigrant rant here?". He said "no this is not ranting, you seem to know a lot about England without being English". I said, "I love England but does that deprive me of talking about public services and stuff like that? Can I not criticize anything for instance?"

His response was: "no, of course you can, I just wish you weren't here".

At this point, heads were shaking around us; I want to believe out of disbelief of what they were hearing. Again, my wife pinched my arm. I told him that he looked like a normal human being on the outside but that inside he was empty. He said, "I just wish you weren't here". I couldn't come up with anything clever in the 15 seconds I had left before my station; neither did I want to fight with him.

I want to ask you one thing. Let's say I have my own reasons to be upset about these incidents and although I wonder how some of you would have felt if the same things happened to you to start with, I will not dwell on an expectation of your sympathies.
But my son speaks English only; spends all of his days with his other English-speaking friends and teachers. What if this person who wished us gone were to say those words next to my son in an age when he could comprehend? Imagine his self-inquiry; his undeserved guilt of his identity. Would he deserve this? Would we deserve this as a family? Should we just "feck off"?

Also, think of the following. If this were to happen, I would calm my son down. We don't live in a neighborhood with an ethnic bias, so he could be "protected". But imagine if a child or a family hears this and takes it back to his/her neighborhood, where hundreds of people breed on and reinforce hatred like this. This is how you make extremists if the mind is not prepared.

I see the UK and London as a wonderful place to settle and hopefully call my home. It's not like the UK opens its arms to me by the way; I deserve my right to live here (at least from a legal perspective) when I prove that I contributed year after year.

I would appreciate it if you did not respond with "feck off" even if you think I should. It really hurts to hear it.

It took me a lot of courage to write this and until the last second, I contemplated deleting all of it. So, please go easy."