At a recent conference on immigration issues held at CMS Cameron McKenna’s offices, Jack Dromey, the Secretary General of the TUC, told a poignant story about a complaint he had received from trade union leaders concerning the use of Polish workers in various building projects in London. He said that after listening to a verbal tirade against these workers, he was able to remind both officials that they were Irish and exactly the same complaints had been made against their grandfathers when they came to work in the UK – without benevolent UK immigration policies they would not be there today.
In May 2004 the European union was enlarged to take 10 countries. 73 million Eastern European citizens joined. Britain and Ireland were the only countries to offer full work and benefit rights to their citizens. Most other EU countries insisted on keeping borders closed for up to 7 years. A European Commission spokesman at the time said, "All our studies show that there will be a fairly limited movement."
The UK established a workers registration scheme for the new migrants and whilst the official estimate was that between 5 – 13,000 individuals a year would arrive, the actual figure from May 2004 to June 2006 was 427,000, with approximately 200,000 further self-employed.
The management of the Workers Registration Scheme by Work Permits (UK) caused a huge backlog in the administration of work permit applications from other countries as resources were prioritised for the Eastern European cases.
Ministers are currently deciding what approach to take towards the potential workers from Bulgaria and Romania assuming they accede to the EU next year as planned.
Immigration is rarely out of the headlines and figures released on 24th August from the office for National Statistics showing a record 60.2 million population in the UK will place further pressure on the Government to address concerns about the level of immigration. In the current climate it is unlike that citizens from Bulgaria and Romania will be treated as favourably.
This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq
Law-Now information is for general purposes and guidance only. The information and opinions expressed in all Law-Now articles are not necessarily comprehensive and do not purport to give professional or legal advice. All Law-Now information relates to circumstances prevailing at the date of its original publication and may not have been updated to reflect subsequent developments.
The original publication date for this article was 05/09/2006.
