Aha - now Geoff Hoon is telling people in Strasbourg that the much vaunted 'controls' on Bulgarian and Romanian workers will be lifted after a year. This comes after the Home Office did a screaming u-turn and halved the number of legal places, after a fight with some farmers.
Can we officially declare it a joke policy yet?
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ReplyDeleteI would be surprised if there were not at least 100 000 Romanians and Bulgarians working in the UK right now, not necessarily legally.
ReplyDeleteSo why is the UK governments preliminary decision to place restriction on Romanian and Bulgarian workers understandable?
1) The Poles and Lithuanians have already filled in the gaps in the labour market.
2) The Romanians are poorer and less skilled than the Slavs. Also, it is a Francophone nation (so they do not speak that much English).
3) There is a large Gypsy presence in Romania; there is a strong likelihood that they would move to the West for the vision of benefits (oh yes, I know how hard it is to get them), not for work.
4) The government by definition has to care about public opinion. The public realises that the immigration is overall desirable as far as economy is concerned, but they also see how the arrival of Poles has radically changed the social make-up of the country.