The UK is acknowledged to be the country in the EU with the highest number of its citizens living abroad. No one knows exactly how many UK citizens have taken advantage of free movement, but estimates are that there are more or less the same number as EU citizens in the UK (about two million.)
A lot of us work and take advantage of public health systems and social benefits in our adopted countries. There are some 800,000 retired UK citizens in Spain alone, who are free to use the Spanish health system (and therefore don’t take up valuable NHS beds).
If, as seems increasingly likely, the UK votes to leave the EU, no one seems to have considered the situation we, as British citizens, will find ourselves in, practically overnight. If the UK denies EU workers the right to work in the UK, why on earth would our adoptive countries maintain our rights to do precisely the same thing? We will suddenly become non-EU citizens with the same residency and work entitlements as, say, Americans or Australians. No one seems to have thought of contingency plans if we all have to come home. On top of this, those of us who have been living aboard for more than 15 years don’t even have the right to vote in a referendum that will affect our lives infinitely more than most of those who can vote.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/12151896/Expats-are-being-frozen-out-on-Europe.html
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