Bulgarians and Romanians
Is immigration and multi-culturalism getting more general interest now than it used to?
I spent a productive morning shopping at the Co-op and was amazed to hear the bakery staff debating Bulgaria and Romania's accession to the European Union. The vibe was certainly in favour of limiting immigration if not stopping it completely.
The argumnets for this were varied:
Reflecting on the effect when the last wave of Eastern European countries joined, former minister Frank Field remarked "We foolishly went ahead and had an open-door policy and instead of between 5,000 and 13,000 people arriving, in the first year something like half a million did. We've now got Bulgaria and Romania coming down the road at us. We need to impose those barriers until there is a Europe-wide policy."
Pretty sensible really, most existing EU members are limiting immigration so where will everyone else go? The UK of course.
The government do tell us that they are all coming here to strengthen our economy, so as tax payers I strongly agree they have every right to use our public services. If they are criminal types (“Crime and corruption in Bulgaria are huge problems and once the borders open up the country will be exporting both to the EU,” says Tsar Kiro, the leader of Bulgaria's gypsy community) or benefit cheats what effect will that have on our limited public resources?
The Conservatives seem an effective opposition for once calling for these limits, and hopefully the knee jerk reaction from Darling will actually go through with the full backing of an effective Home Office.
Update 22/08/06: Interesting information on current migrant workers
I spent a productive morning shopping at the Co-op and was amazed to hear the bakery staff debating Bulgaria and Romania's accession to the European Union. The vibe was certainly in favour of limiting immigration if not stopping it completely.
The argumnets for this were varied:
- "they're twenty years behing us",
- "they will work for the minimum wage and have an effect on unemployment levels",
- "they cut grass with those metals things" (I think she meant scythes).
Reflecting on the effect when the last wave of Eastern European countries joined, former minister Frank Field remarked "We foolishly went ahead and had an open-door policy and instead of between 5,000 and 13,000 people arriving, in the first year something like half a million did. We've now got Bulgaria and Romania coming down the road at us. We need to impose those barriers until there is a Europe-wide policy."Pretty sensible really, most existing EU members are limiting immigration so where will everyone else go? The UK of course.
The government do tell us that they are all coming here to strengthen our economy, so as tax payers I strongly agree they have every right to use our public services. If they are criminal types (“Crime and corruption in Bulgaria are huge problems and once the borders open up the country will be exporting both to the EU,” says Tsar Kiro, the leader of Bulgaria's gypsy community) or benefit cheats what effect will that have on our limited public resources?The Conservatives seem an effective opposition for once calling for these limits, and hopefully the knee jerk reaction from Darling will actually go through with the full backing of an effective Home Office.
Update 22/08/06: Interesting information on current migrant workers
posted by Mr T at 12:38 pm
2 Comments:
The strongest Eastern European economies have already joined (i.e. Czech Republic and Slovenia) and every subsequent enlargement is incorporating the countries that didn’t make it first time round and each time the populations are going to be more eager to migrate. Off the top of my head I’d say that twice as many Romanians and Bulgarians as Poles would enter the UK (as a proportion of the population) if there are no limits. So when Turkey and Ukraine join in 2011 (combined population 130million) there will be at least 20-30million newcomers.
As far as crime and corruption go a lot of criminal types are already over here already – there’s Abramovich for a start!
Speaking of which there is no mention of Russian immigrants on that survey and I hear a lot more Russian than Polish spoken on the streets of Sheffield/Rotherham – so either a lot of Russians are pretending to be Poles, or there are thousands of illegals mixed in with the legals...all a bit of a shambles really.
I suppose the other solution is to have no limits, let the UK economy go into recession (I think we're due for a good hard recession) during which unemployment will rise dramatically and maybe after much hardship and bitterness and lots of out-migration the market will correct itself??
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