By Anne Laure
Mondesert — A DECADE after concerns soared over an invasion of “Polish
plumbers”, Britain is gripped by fresh fears that a new wave of immigrant
workers will arrive after restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian nationals are
lifted on January 1. As the tabloid press increases the pressure on Prime
Minister David Cameron with alarmist headlines, the government has rushed
through legislation restricting EU migrants from claiming unemployment
handouts. Ministers refuse to give any official figure of how many Bulgarians
and Romanians it expects to come to Britain, but estimates vary from 30,000 to
70,000 a year. The issue is highly sensitive in Britain, which hundreds of
thousands of immigrants have made their home since the European Union expanded
to eastern Europe in 2004.
The Labour government in power at the time vastly
underestimated the number who would come and admitted it should have done more to
limit the influx.
The
biggest group came from Poland. Around 640,000 Poles live in Britain, according
to official statistics released in 2012, but the Polish community estimates the
real figure might be as high as one million. “We had a pretty difficult
experience when the eight countries joined a decade ago,” Nigel Mills, a
lawmaker from Cameron’s Conservative Party, said. “We had forecast 13,000
coming and more like a million came. It was pretty disastrous.” Mills has
submitted a parliamentary motion calling for the restrictions on Bulgarians and
Romanians to be extended by another five years — time, he says, for the
economic gap between Britain and the EU’s two poorest countries to close.
“There is a real concern about what could happen again, especially when our
economy and our employment market have not recovered anywhere near completely
from the recession,” he said.
People
from Romania and Bulgaria, and eight other European countries who are currently
only allowed to undertake a limited number of jobs, will have free access to
the labour market from January 1, 2014. Around 140,000 work in Britain already.
Most Romanians have traditionally chosen to move to Mediterranean countries in
the past. But as the concerns grow that many will opt for Britain this time,
and the anti-immigration party UKIP gains in popularity, the government has
hastily ushered in legislation preventing all EU migrants from claiming
unemployment benefit payments in their first three months in the country.
Cameron has also said he wants to see limits on the free movement in the EU,
provoking anger in Brussels. British police have even sent a team to Romania to
try to discourage jobless Romanians from coming to Britain. In a country
renowned for its multi-culturalism, attitudes towards immigration seem to have
hardened.
A
majority of Britons are opposed to the lifting of the restrictions. Fifty per
cent want to see them extended, according to a YouGov opinion poll in
September, with the figures steadily growing in polls since then. But business
leaders welcome the influx of labour — and The Economist magazine addressed an
open letter of welcome to Romanians and Bulgarians this week. The fears of
large movements of Romanian and Bulgarian workers are also felt in Germany. The
Bild tabloid was up in arms when it was revealed that nearly 39,000 people from
the two countries are receiving unemployment payments in Germany this year, a
figure that has doubled in two years. In France, authorities have accused the
Roma minority who have flocked to France from Romania and Bulgaria of being
responsible for a rise in petty crime.
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