I will always remember the mood at the oversubscribed first meeting of the 3 Million forum in early July in Bristol. The anxiety in the room was palpable. People who had lived in the UK for anything between a couple of years and 60 or more were suddenly finding themselves in a bubble of suspended time, with huge question marks about their future, their lives and their families. Something had to happen; apathy was not an option.

The official message since July has been that “nothing has changed”, a message relayed on the gov.uk pages relating to the application for a permanent residence card. The reality on the ground is that, effectively, everything has changed for us. People calling the Home Office have been told to apply for the card ever since the announcement of the referendum in February, as proof of their entitlement to stay. This is also the advice proffered by many immigration lawyers and EU law experts. The process is worse than your worst bureaucratic nightmare, and worse still if your life is complex and you require the services of an immigration lawyer to help you through the application, something that the majority of potential applicants cannot afford.

We started the 3 Million forum with the aim of preserving the rights of EU nationals living in the UK. “Rights” is a funny concept. Depending on your perspective, it is abstract or concrete, vague or meaningful, something to undermine or nurture, a fair or an unfair plaything of politicians and others, and so forth. The fact is, what is at stake behind these “rights” is people’s lives. The media have concerned themselves mostly with the political rhetoric of the vote to leave, often forgetting that the political is also extremely personal when it directly affects the lives of so many ordinary men and women who have established a life here.

Our forum on Facebook perfectly illustrates this, with thousands of people sharing stories of building careers, marrying, having children and grandchildren, people creating all kinds of wealth in every possible area, all contributing in their unique way to the life and economy of the UK, but who are now feeling unwelcome.

Our daily lives are no different from those of British citizens. We are confronted with the same mundane or exciting issues; we are just ordinary people trying to get on with our ordinary lives. Until now. For many “going back” is not an option. Many of us made a choice at some point to come and live here for reasons that are as varied as life itself is. We are not EU “migrants” as we are often labelled. When you have been here many years you are no longer a “migrant”, you are a resident, someone who has established roots of one kind or another.

As LS, who came over from Spain 16 years ago, puts it: “I still get ‘but you’ll be fine’ or ‘this doesn’t affect you, does it?’ Of course it does! I am an EU citizen. The fact is that I’ve lived, worked and paid taxes in the UK, I’m married to a British citizen and my children are British and Spanish, what’s going on doesn’t give me any guarantees, so of course it’s affecting me.”

We are hearing from many people who are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression because of the uncertainty, something that is likely to go on for the next couple of years and beyond, or until our status is settled. Yes we do have a so-called “permanent right” to stay after five years or so, although there is nothing “permanent” about it as the card is only valid for a number of years, but when these rights become bargaining chips in a political game we are not even allowed to have a say in, this creates an intolerable and unacceptable situation.

It could all be so very different if Theresa May and members of her government not only declared that we were all welcome here and unconditionally guaranteed to stay post-Brexit, but also remedied the bureaucratic nightmare associated with the application for a permanent residence card which is unworkable for all parties. Playing with people’s lives and potentially wrecking our futures jars really badly with the values that made us love this country so much.