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Six million immigrants descend
on Britain
STEVE DOUGHTY
UK
Daily Mail
Thursday, February 8, 2007
More than six million Eastern Europeans have travelled to Britain
since since the EU's borders were thrown open to them, new figures
have shown.
The figure is ten times higher than official estimates of the numbers
of Poles and migrants from neighbouring countries who are thought
to have settled here in the past three years.
It suggests the real number of migrants from Eastern Europe who
have stayed to live and work in Britain could be much higher than
the 600,000 estimate that has been acknowledged by ministers.
Last year alone nearly 2.8 million visitors arrived from the eight
countries that joined Europe in 2004, the figures showed.
The fast-rising level of travel to Britain is the latest indicator
of the growing scale of Eastern European migration. There were more
than four times as many visitors from Eastern Europe last year than
in 2003, the year before labour markets were thrown open to workers
from the East.
The figures come from a Government survey of air and seaports notorious
for recording misleading reasons why people arriving are coming
to Britain. Around one in ten of the Eastern Europeans said they
intended to stay and work - but the real figure is likely to be
much higher.
The new pointer to the unprecedented level of migration follows
the first Government admission that Eastern European workers have
brought with them social disorder and crime.
The Audit Commission, the local government watchdog, said last
week that the wave of migration is associated with disruption in
housing, tensions on the street, difficulties in refuse collections
and libraries, and police alarm over motoring crime.
Wednesday's figures from the Government's Office for National Statistics
and refer to numbers travelling into Britain.
They present only a rough guide to visitor numbers - the International
Passenger Survey used by the ONS to prepare its report is universally
recognised as a highly inaccurate way of establishing patterns of
travel and migration.
The report does not give a count of numbers of visitors who left
the country and how long they stayed. Its methods are far too crude
to identify trends in Eastern European migration - for example,
the growing ranks of those thought to operate a form of commuting
between work in Britain and homes in Eastern Europe.
But it acknowledged that nearly one in ten of the Eastern Europeans
who answered survey questions at air and sea ports said they planned
to stay in Britain for more than three months.
Only one in a hundred visitors from Western European countries
said they intended to remain here for more than three months.
The scale of travel from Eastern Europe means Poles alone now outnumber
Australians and Canadians coming to Britain. Last year just over
1.6 million Poles arrived here, a total of visitors that was greater
than those from any other European country except France, Germany
and Ireland.
Numbers of Eastern Europeans who have settled as migrants since
the eight Eastern European countries joined the EU in April 2004
are usually reckoned at about 600,000. The Audit Commission report
last week pointed to the issue of 662,000 new national insurance
numbers in the year up to April 2006.
The real level of settlement by Eastern Europeans remains a matter
of speculation - the only certainty is that the total is many times
higher than the 13,000 a year predicted by the Home Office in 2004.
Economist Ruth Lea of the Tory-leaning Centre for Policy Studies
think tank said: "We know there has been a major effect on
the economy, wages and unemployment. We don't know just how many
people are involved and how big the effects are.
"These figures are from the International Passenger Survey,
which we know to be inaccurate, and which has been criticised by
the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King. We need better
information."
The figures raise deep questions over the reasons for visits by
such large numbers of people. A boom in tourism from Eastern Europe
on this scale is unlikely, and visits to migrants working here would
be unlikely to produce such huge numbers.
However they may reflect repeated visits by people coming to work
for short periods and then returning home. They may also reflect
much higher numbers of migrants that are officially recognised.
The Government's Worker Registration Scheme has tallied 510,000
workers from Eastern Europe since 2004, including 308,000 Poles.
But the register does not count self-employed workers or those who
join the black economy.
It was discredited as a means of checking migrant numbers after
it was revealed last year that it counted just 95 Polish plumbers.
The Daily Mail succeeded in assembling that number of Polish plumbers
in West London within 24 hours through agencies and advertising
in a newsagents' window.
The eight Eastern European countries that joined the EU in April
2004 are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech
Republic, Hungary and Slovenia.
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BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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