Title: No vote, no voice: EU migrants and the general election
Headings: 
24 April 2015
No vote, no voice: EU migrants and the general election

Content: In the 30-second-long ad, people are prevented from taking a staircase, putting ketchup on their fry-up or entering a park. “Some people can come in, some people can’t,” explains the man on the telly with a flipchart in his hands at a gate. The ad wants people to register for the upcoming general election. But some people can and some people can’t. “They want us here to spend money on houses or food and want us to pay taxes but they don’t want us to vote, to get involved,” says Aleksandra Maciejewski, 32, originally from Poland. It is a Saturday afternoon, just a few weeks before the general election, when participants of the EU Migrant Workers Group in Southport meet at the city’s Salvation Army Church. Aleksandra, Igor Puskarski from Latvia and Marius Martisius from Lithuania discuss their voting rights in the country they chose as their new home. “Where is the line when a migrant worker becomes just a worker?” Igor asks. “When someone comes for a season and then goes back, that is a migrant worker for me,” says Aleksandra.