Earlier this week the Sofia News Agency reported that the Government is expected to ease entry requirements for Bulgarian and Romanian citizens before Christmas. What this actually means is that the visa requirement currently in force for Bulgarian and Romanian visitors will be dropped a month or so before there is a legal requirement to do so – when both countries join the EU on January 1, 2007.
The Government has stated that it will adopt a gradualist approach to opening the labour market to Bulgarian and Romanian nationals by applying “transitional controls” – according to last Monday’s Daily Mirror
So what has any of this got to do with Andrew Rosindell? Well he was reported by the Sofia News Agency as saying "Any indication that they are going to be more easy-going on this is not sending out a very good signal and people need to be concerned, Caution is what is needed rather than an easy-come, easy-go attitude."
Somehow I doubt that removal of the visa requirement for Romanians and Bulgarians a few weeks early is going to make much difference to anything. Romanian and Bulgarian citizens arriving in the UK will be subject to the same control as other non visa nationals.
Immigration rules have not changed radically over the last 15 years since I worked as an immigration officer: if, for example, an immigration officer is not satisfied that a person seeking entry as a visitor then he or she is liable to be refused entry. I have no idea what form the transitional controls will take but it looks as if there may be a return to the sort of controls applied to Greek nationals after Greece’s accession – Greek nationals were not free to take work in the UK for seven years after accession.
Rosindell was also in “rent-a-quote” mode in the Daily Express last month, a newspaper that usually contrives to find an immigration angle to any story.
The story in question concerned new low cost air routes from Romania and Bulgaria to cater of course “for waves of workers from Romania and Bulgaria” when they join the European Union. Rosindell feared that the increase in low-cost flights was a "worrying sign”. He said: "It is a sign that the low-cost airlines are ready to benefit by potentially encouraging people to fly to Britain.”
Okay I am being a bit disingenuous by stopping the quote there He went on to say that “The Government needs to think very carefully before they allow another avalanche of people turning up on our doorstep looking for work.".. Conversely, perhaps, Sofia and Bucharest should be quaking in its boots at the prospect of an avalanche of Britons seeking a cheap place for a drunken stag night…
Andrew
Rosindell
13 comments:
Good post, Jams. The last line strikes a chord -- I daresay that even the polite Estonian distaste for Finnish "vodka tourists" in Tallinn has been replaced by a much more pronounced dread of a certain type of Briton. In Rīga, many people I know who used to love hanging out in the Old Town never set foot in it anymore in summer. We do very much enjoy the money your lager louts drop, of course...
Thanks Peteris. Personally I would rather avoid many fellow Britons while abroad - which is exactly why I find it good to be able to wear the "green" instead!
i, for one, am sick to death of the immigration 'debate' here in the states. there isn't really a debate here- it is more like- 'we are white and we don't want hordes of angry brown folks invading our country.' sigh.
There is an element of that here too Betmo and there has been for years.. There was a notorious by election here in the 60s (If an MP dies or leaves teh Commons between general elections a new one is elected rather than appointed) in Smethwick. The Tories are legged to have circulated the slogan "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote liberal or Labour"
Rosindell is trying to scare monger, sadly
I disagree with betmo. We don't want illegal hordes coming here that we don't know what illness they may carry, what their intentions are, and if they have a criminal background. Funny, this issue seems to be uniting people in a big way. Turns out Americans on the whole don't care for illegals draining the school systems, hospitals, prisons, not carrying auto insurance, running criminal activities, bringing more illegals in and using them for prostitution and drug running and gang violence........ Then there are the reports of our borders being breached by terrorists. No, legal immigration enforcement is a necessary evil.
Now then, my good friend, Miss Biotech Goddess is indeed a Bulgarian native and this is our favorite song that pays tribute. May England be invaded by fun loving Bulgarian Chicks! We can sing it as Romanian Chicks in honor of Miss Redwine too. I don't want anyone to feel disenfranchised.
Near where I live, was a street, with empty storefronts, now thriving with Mexican, Somali and Vietnamese businesses.
It will only be good, when you open the doors, to the Bulgarians and Romanians.
The thing about Romanian and Bulgarian immigration is a non issue in the long run: European Union citizens have the right to seek work or extablish business in any other EU nation. This right can be introduced gradually over a few years as was the case after Greece, Spain and Portugal became EU members.
Here in the UK, illegals make up perhaps 1% of the population (prabably rather less, perhaps a little more). They don't drain resources much but they are at the very bottom of the pile. APeople like the fact that the crappy work is done but they will rage over the presence of illegals. Illegals may be seen as "scum" but without them sectors of the economy would fail and that is the thing.
Immigration brings bad elements of course but these are far outweighed by the positives. I support fair immigration controls....
Hmm I am all over the place here! I will come back to this anon
I'm not all over the place. My husband, stepmother, aunt, and my cousin's new bride to be are all foreign born and entered the country LEGALLY. We have all payed a lot of money to do so and waded through a lot of bureaucratic bullcrap. How can anyone possibly be thrilled for those who circumvented the law? The Federal Judiciary Committii released a statistic that 25 people in America are killed by an illegal alien everyday. This number includes vehicular manslaughter all the way up to outright homicide. And not including the number of sexual predators and child molesters. Still wonder why the vast majority hate illegal immigration? It's not because of racism.
Would you allow a stranger to enter into your home without finding out who he is, and what his intentions are?
Did you watch the Bulgarian Chicks clip? That sound is super catchy. I can't play it out in public because I'm helpless to resist the belly dance feelings it inspires me to do and NOBODY wants to see that.
As Jams writes, in Europe it will finally be a non-issue; freedom of movement and the free movement of labor are among the main elements of the EU. Britain and Ireland approached the "problem" rationally -- why put in place temporary barriers that merely lead to people working in the underground economy? Such barriers are especially counter-productive when one considers the fact that both Ireland and the UK are desperately in need of foreign labor (Ireland, for instance, has projected needs of a couple of hundred thousand people in the near future).
The barriers lead to exploitation (not that the legal guest workers aren't sometimes exploited), and the governments of the countries do not collect taxes on the illegals. Undocumented guest workers are less likely to return to their home countries because they cannot be sure of being able to return to the host country. Then there's the fact that Eastern Europe waited long enough to enter the EU -- and the playing field is anyway hardly level (the CAP subsidies here are a fraction of what they are in the EU-15, for example... the free movement of services has not been implemented... Eastern European firms face obstacles when trying to compete, whilst Western European firms gleefully capture our markets). Support for accession would have been considerably diminished had we known just how second-class our Member States would be -- at the very least, the promised individual benefits ought to be delivered, and immediately.
I fully understand the situation, Firstly I would feel utterly aggrieved had gone though the legal channels. In immigration enforcement here (the part that deals with illegals, a lot of information comes from other memebers of the ethnic communities). Interestingly referring to other blogs agaian in response, there was debate over at the furtherleft forum whether to let this post from Roman who immigrated legally from the US
"America is a sovereign nation just like Mexico. As such, it has over the last 200+ years evolved into a nation which is governed by a rule of law and order just like Mexico. It is the wish of the citizens of this country that our borders be secured but for the last 30 years or so our government leaders have allowed the orderly system of legal immigration to devolve into chaos. Why? So that large agricultural, manufacturing and service industries will have a plentiful supply of cheap labor. Both Mexican and US leadership's lack of border enforcement has been, and is now, criminal in nature."
"I was an immigrant. I came here legally after submitting papers and waiting for 3 years.
Do you mind it if you are waiting in line and someone steps in front of you? How about if it is a never ending stream of people stepping in front of you? Is this fair?"
Roman is a regular poster on Renegade Eye's and Sonia's blogs.on a left wing blog, the other a right wing one.
Having worked in Immigration I still believe in immigration control but it must be firm and fair. I know that sounds like a soundbite! I don't support unregulated migration. With regard to illegal immigration my first priority would be to hit at the traffickers. They, in my view, are parasites who have no regard for their "cargo".. we see that in the chinese immigrants who were found suffocated to death in the back of a lorry at Dover a few years ago. We see that in the thousands of girls tricked into prositution here and elsewhere in Europe (and I am sure in the US too) and so on.
The most intractable cause of illegal immigration is the gradient berteen the rich and the poor in the world. While conditions remain atrocious in a huge part of the world then there will be the push factor to emigrate. There is of course the pull factor of at least the hope of a better life in the "West". While a substantial gap exists there will be emigrants and a horde of parasites willing to prey on the emigrants. Effective developmental aid and free trade will go some way to improve conditions..
Peteris, I realise in my last comment, that it would take an end to world hunger and poverty to kill much of the "push-pull" factor that generates migration, certainly from the third world. But the UK labour market DOES need more people if economic growth is to be achieved, our population is ageing, our birth rate is low. The same goes for Ireland too. EU nationals are filling that market and are less prone to exploitation than illegals.
Although it has caused a bit of a storm here, I think that opening the doors to the last tranche of EU accession states was not a bad thing. In some areas there has been a strain on the local infrastructure but nothing serious. EU nationals have a right under the treaty of Rome to free movement and many British and Irish nationals have taken up this right. Other nations do not have such rights of course but managed immifration from other states will be of benefit to the UK and the the emigrant nations although there is of course a risk of "brain dran"
"although there is of course a risk of "brain dran" - no, who has no brains, whose who stay or those who leave?
Test the brain drain relates to the inevitable loss of skills and expertise. Nobody is saying that one who stays is stupider than one who goes or vice versa.
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