eurealist.co.uk

The statistics, published by the British Government on Tuesday (22 August), reveal that 447,000 workers from the eight eastern countries that joined the EU just over two years ago have applied to work in Britain – of these 427,095 have been approved.

As the biggest of the new member states, Poland also has the largest numbers of workers in Britain with well over half coming - 264,560 - from the country. The next in number are Lithuanians and Slovakians.

All well and good and it has been shown by the government that this influx of EU Nationals has been a net benefit to GB PLC.

Although figures reported in the press also this week have shown that these new immigrants are able to claim child benefit and other benefits for their children and families back home.

The other point is that this very large addition to the work force has had the effect of forcing labour cost down, which might well be good for Britian but cannot be good news for the resident work force.

I am tempted to wonder if this has been factored into the equation.

However the point of this post is that the figures are so very much higher than originally predicted by the UK labour government which prior to the May 2004 enlargement suggested that between 5,000 and 13,000 would apply to work in the UK. Those news papers which were suggesting higher figures were pilloried for scaremongering by the government, yet the real figure is even higher than those papers were suggesting.

According to Euobserver “The government has defended the original estimates by saying that they were based on the assumption that many more of the original 15 member states would also keep their markets open to workers from the east.”

But if I remember correctly it had already been made clear by the other members that they would be placing a moratorium on workers form the East, I belive Germany Austria and France have just extended this for a few more years, and will now allow not workers in until 2011. Only Britian Ireland and Sweden fully opened their doors and fully implemented the treaty agreements.

If the figures had been marginally higher or even twice as high than government estimates, they could be forgiven for a miscalculation, but thirty two times higher is some mistake, and just indicates that when it comes to the EU our government is quite prepared to lie to the British people.

We are now hearing a great deal about the next EU enlargement; Bulgaria and Romania are set to join either next January, or at the latest the following January. Both the Conservatives and the Government are suggesting that this time they will put some restrictions on workers from these new members.

But again we are being lied to by the politicians, who should know full well that that once Bulgaria and Romania join their citizens will have every right to come to this country and as David Rennie point outs

“Whitehall officials say stoutly that they have the power to impose limits on Romanian and Bulgarian “access to the UK labour market”. But what does that actually mean? It basically means the Government could create some new offences, specially to cover Romanians and Bulgarians: working without a work permit, or employing someone from those two nations without a permit.

Given that we cannot close our borders, and average household incomes in Romania and Bulgaria are a tenth of those in Britain, it is not hard to guess one major outcome of creating such new offences: thousands will come anyway, but this time as criminals.

As a convinced free-marketeer, I must admit to moral qualms about welcoming people to live in my country, then turning them into criminals, just because they want to work for a living.

But if moral arguments do not work, try self-interest. Expanding Britain’s black economy is not a good idea. It would be bad for the health of society. It would reduce tax revenues, and hurt British workers, too. As long as east Europeans are working legally, their broad pay and conditions can only fall so far.

Once people are on the black, employers can treat them as near-slaves, putting far more pressure on legal workers. ”