Wanting to regulate the numbers coming into the country is not racist per se. But, in the referendum campaign, the leave side's narrative on this was very racist. A poster depicting a long line of refugees, mostly black and nowhere near the UK border, had the leading light of the leave campaign, Farage, standing proudly in front of it. The message of the poster was that we had to get back "control of our borders." Well we already have cast-iron control of our borders apropos of refugees. Ask the thousands in the Calais jungle or the millions in camps in Turkey or Lebanon how easy it is to get across our borders. The poster was deliberately conflating the refugee crisis with the perfectly legitimate movement of EU citizens in order to come here to work, who are not mostly black and who don't form long snaking lines. A racist lie. It's also lies to claim that EU citizens come here to live on benefits. Overwhelmingly they do not. Pro rata, the numbers of immigrants who are on out-of-work benefits are minuscule compared with the numbers of UK citizens in that position. Immigrants are blamed for "driving down wages," when the reality is that wages are always decided by their UK employers. Immigrants are blamed for the housing crisis, when the reality is that successive governments have, for decades, failed to build anything like enough houses. Immigrants are blamed for putting a strain on the NHS, when the reality is that the Tories are letting the NHS go to the dogs (compare waiting times now with waiting times pre-Coalition, for example). Next time you visit a hospital have a quick butchers at the staff in every department, then still tell me that immigrants are "putting a strain." Yes we don't train enough doctors and nurses (along with lots of other skilled workers). Oh yes, you can bet your arse that there'll be plenty of exemptions for them to come here to work when we finally "take back control" (though, of course, we'll never see the day...)