Old habits seem to die very hard and just because you have moved abroad it doesn’t mean that you cease to be British anymore, it also means that you don’t instantly change your views and opinions.  Sometimes this is a real shame because there is nothing worse than the Brit abroad with the xenophobic immigrant complex.

You all know the type of person I am talking about, the person who posts all those inspirational posters on Facebook about how “Britons are what makes Britain great” or some more to the point ones that usually include statistics about how much better people would be off without all those dirty foreigners living in the country.

After all everybody knows that foreigners only move to Britain to steal our jobs, our women and our sense of national pride – don’t they?

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, however bigoted it may be but it is very hard to take a person seriously when they bemoan the problems of immigrants when they themselves are an immigrant.

There is a faction within the British expat community who still hold very dear their beliefs about Johnny Foreigner but they have apparently failed to realise that being a Brit abroad means that they are the very problem they are talking about.

I have met many Brits abroad who suffer from the incurable xenophobic immigrant complex and no matter how hard you try to stifle your sniggers they contain to remain unaware that they are a walking, talking oxymoron (perhaps just remove the oxy from that actually).

If you spoke about a community in the UK who failed to learn the local language, brought their own churches and religion, refused to integrate into the local society, set up their own schools specifically for their community, began businesses aimed at serving their own community and only employing people of their own nationality – people would be up in arms with shouts of “get back to your own country” being screamed from the roof tops.

However, it appears that as a Brit abroad the normal rules do not apply.

I know it was the done thing in colonial times to try to educate the natives to our superior ways but I thought we learnt the hard way that this wasn’t really a good idea?

I have looked into the xenophobic immigrant complex and it sadly appears that for as long as we are able to get a copy of the Daily Mail from the local newspaper shop in whatever country we live in there is no real hope of a cure.