Government's immigration proposal

Home Secretary John Reid has finally unveiled the government’s plans for how Britain’s employment market will deal with next year’s accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union and the potential influx of workers from those countries to our shores. While his proposals seem sensible in theory, many are sceptical as to whether they can work in practice.

Britain’s ‘open door’ policy following the previous EU expansion in May 2004 brought about an unprecedented wave of mostly Polish immigrants to the country and, while it is widely accepted this mass immigration largely benefited our economy, there is no longer seems to be the capacity to absorb another large group of new workers. In this light, the Home Office have proposed that while under EU law Romanians and Bulgarians will have the freedom to travel to and live in Britain, they will not be allowed full access to the job market. Unskilled labourers will be restricted to food processing and agriculture, where they are still needed, but they will not be allowed to find work in any other sectors.

While this is certainly a positive step, EU law allows residents in any country to ignore labour restrictions if they are self-employed, and this could prove to be a potential loophole which allows many Romanians and Bulgarians to work illegally in the UK. Although officially immigrants from the new member states wouldn’t be allowed to become, for example, construction workers, it would be difficult for the authorities to track down those who claimed to be self-employed but were actually working for a building company. The shadow home secretary has labelled this as a ‘big loophole’, while also warning that there was no way of stopping ‘undesirable’ Romanians and Bulgarians from moving to the UK. In fact all the major opposition political parties have raised concerns over these plans, and warn that they may prove to be unenforceable and will simply cause many immigrants to work illegally.

Fortunately this new immigration policy does allow for a yearly review and update to the regulations, although judging by the recent wave of Polish immigrants even waiting one year can result in a dramatically altered situation. In early 2004 the British government predicted that perhaps 15,000 migrant workers would come to the country following EU expansion, but in fact about 600,000 arrived in the following two years. While the government has promised to be better prepared this time around, these new plans will not fill a worried public with too much enthusiasm.