Work restrictions on new countries joining the EU...

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

Just read the bbc article on this and tbh can't see the outrage.

I'm all for free movement and the right to work, I'm a foreigner myself, but seeing the impact that the open access to the latest members has had with way more migrants than anticipated coming over I'm scared of the prospect of another 'flood'. So restricting them to certain sectors to start off with isn't such a bad idea.

I appreciate Mrs Kuneva statement "It's a little a bit strange why this policy isn't kept [for Bulgaria]", however, I wonder whether she has put a thought towards how it affects the local economy?

I for one am going to be out of a job in the small construction company I work for as he has to close down because he can't compete anymore. And also looking for new work I have noticed a drastic drop in rates, probably partially due to people from the new member states being willing to work for much less. Don't get me wrong it's great that they want to work and get work, but on the other hand it's making it really hard for people like me who do require a certain amount of income due to financial commitments like childcare etc.

Feel free to cruzify me for my opinion

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

hmmm everybody must be busy with cooking lunch

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Well, i'm not scared. My Dh is a plumber & heating engineer and there are plenty of foreigners doing similar jobs. He's not out of business, although he charges more. Why? Because he's well qualified, registered, insured, guarantees workmanship, has a fixed, known address. Some people prefer this. Others will go for the quick/cheap fix. There's plenty of work out there for everyone.

[Freckle]

I really don't understand why this wasn't anticipated more carefully with the other Eastern European states. Free movement within the EU is good in principle where all states are equal and there is likely to be similar movement in all directions.

However, when you allow states to join whose economy is sooo much worse than that of other states, the flow is only ever going to be in one direction - towards the state with the better economy.

Perhaps there ought to be some restriction on all states, whereby their economies have to be at a certain level before free movement is allowed. The alternative is that those states with reasonable economies are always going to be swamped with migrants.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Freckel - but they've already had to have in place hundreds of things in order to qualify for EU membership. Economic indicators were part of that.

I think that has always been the case, that "states with reasonable economies are always going to be swamped with migrants". Part of what makes the world go round.

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

Christina, plenty of work for everybody? sorry but there are only so many jobs available

Unfortunately my boss is being forced 'under' because he like to use 'properly qualified' workers such as your dh, and that reflects in his quotes being more expensive than other comapnies who are happy to employ unqualified labourers from e.g. eastern european countries.

Agree that to join the EU a country has to fit a certain bill, however it is a well know factor that even long time members still get 'carried' by the more afluent countries. Problem there is with those countries having all the migrants coming imho will cause the afluent countries into a downward slide

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

The other companies you talk about will sooner or later get into trouble if the work provided isn't of good standard. It's a temporary hitch.

(Off to get a post with the IMF.)

[Freckle]

Of course it's always been the case that states with better economies are attracting the migrants. The difference is that, in the past, those migrants either were not allowed into the country or had to fulfill certain criteria. With the current situation, anyone from EU countries can come here whether they are in a position to contribute to the economy or become a burden on it.

I know that there are restrictions with regard to access to the public purse, but they do not appear to be implemented. When Poland joined the EU, their people were allowed to come here but not to claim benefits (apparently). However, I know the Polish people are claiming benefits and are receiving them.

I'm all for immigration and adding to the general melting pot in this country, but there have to be limits given the size of the country and the available work.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

"However, I know the Polish people are claiming benefits and are receiving them."

If it's illegal why don't you tell on them, then? Do you know British people doing the same? Are they less of a burden on the tax-payer?

[Freckle]

But is it "illegal"? The government made much of imposing such restrictions but it would appear that they are not being implemented. I don't know whether it is a case of the benefits agency not doing their job properly or the government saying one thing in public but acting differently.

Why shouldn't British people claim benefits? Most of those claiming have paid for the "privilege" through their NI contributions.

As I said, I'm not against immigration. I'm descended from immigrants and have worked abroad within the EU myself. I'm merely suggesting that having a blanket open door policy is going to produce problems.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

I understood from your post that it was illegal and it was in that context that I asked.

Not sure about the contributing bit. You can claim benefits without having contributed at all. You can also do that as a Brit in other EU countries.

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

I think the benefit question is whole other topic . Any benefit fraud or 'just to plain lazy to get off their a**e and get a job' be it from British or other nationalities is crap!

I know that my former nanny does receive tax credits, don't know whether that falls under the benefits legilsation? But I@m sure they official authorities know that she's polish.

I've been paying into NI for 14 years and had to fight to get my Statutory maternity pay (hadn't been with the co long enough to qualify for proper maternity pay). I was soooo annoyed I can't even begin to describe. In the end I got it though. Get gutted when ANY person who knows how to abuse the system gets away with it because I'm just to law abiding to try.

[DominiConnor]

There is a widespread, and very incorrect view that these people are coming here for benefits. To be sure there are poeple in Bulgaria who long to live in a council flat in Lewisham on benefits, but I find it hard to see that as a horde.

The statistics tell a very different story.
Numbers of EU migrants claiming benefits is so low that it's hard to measure, being something like the % of random people who are in car & work accidents in a given year.
Most pay tax, and all of course pay things like VAT. The bizarre way that we fund local councils mean that you can have people in your area working in the formal economy paying tax, yet with no extra revenue to provide local infrastructure for them.
Also, the evidence is not one for mass migration.
Several parts of Italy, and Greece are horribly poor, yet in the decades they've been members movement has been quite small.
Indeed, some of us recall the 1980s, when unemployment in some parts of Britain like Liverpool was awful, yet there were jobs going "a bike ride" away...

People don't move all the much unless you actually start shooting at them.

As a pedantic point, having done work for the part of the govrernment which holds NI contributions, NI is a tax. It's not insurance, it doesn't "pay for" any benefit. It all goes into one big pot to be spent as the government see fit.

[Freckle]

I wasn't suggesting that they are coming here to claim benefits. I'm sure that they aren't. I only raised that issue as a point about the government saying one thing but reality being somewhat different.

I do know though that a fair number of people in the south-east are losing work to Eastern Europeans, mainly because of their lower expectations wrt living conditions. E.g. they will live in over-crowded conditions (by our standards) in order to send money home, even though they will work for less money than "locals". I have had a number of people in the building trade in particular come to me at the CAB stating that they have lost work in this way.

Again, I am not against immigration, but I do feel that some controls need to be in place as we are an island with limited capacity.

[DominiConnor]

Why do you think "capacity" is relevant in this context ?
Britain has an ageing workforce with mediocre skill levels, getting young hard workers cheap is got for the overall health of the economy.

Like several others here, I'm the child of immigrants,but sadly I note a correlation between this and a paranoid attitude to newcomers.

These people are competing for work, but they are also consumers, requiring food, a place to sleep, fuel etc. Since they are rather more than 99% wage earners, we are the richer for their presence.

[expatinscotland]

It's NOT a very big island.

[Freckle]

Britain also has rising unemployment at the moment. Do you not see a correlation between that and the recent influx of 600,000 people from Eastern European? I do not feel for one moment that I am paranoid. Merely suggesting that we do not have capacity for an unlimited number of new people, who have families which require housing (there are problems in the south-east with insufficient housing for the current population), schools (there is insufficient funding for teaching pupils where English is not their first language), health care (the NHS is struggling as we all know), etc.

Some controls are merely sensible. The government vastly underestimated the numbers who would come here when Poland and others joined the EU - 15,000 as opposed to nearly 600,000 from Poland alone.

[Normsnockers]

Message withdrawn

[DominiConnor]

Welfare certainly does damage the work ethic at the bottom end. That's also the part of the labour market where skill levels are dreadful. Being much richer than Poland or Bulgaria, Britian should be able to raise nearly all of it's population to a level that makes competition with them very hard.

Polish builders/plumbers et al don't seem to be less skilled than British ones, and of course many Brits don't train hence the shortage they exploit.

Freckle, the reason there is insufficient capacity is that the taxes these people are paying is not being spent on infrastructure. School haven't been built because both political parties talk big on education put prioritise it somewhere below supporting the cheese industry.

Also, it's hard to use government stats on employment to work out what's going on. One factor is that after decades of disguised unemployment through disability welfare, at last an effort is being made to help those that can wor into employment, or in many cases moving them to the unemployed list.

The numbers are very small, depending upon whose you believe it's somewhere between 1 and 1.5%.
That shouldn't be putting a strain on the 4th largest economy in the world, and actually it isn't.
Yes, many kids don't have English as their first language. And ?
Their parents are paying taxes, so why aren't they used to pay for the extra demand they generate ?
Most don't bring their families, in effect we are ripping them off with taxes that bring them personally very little benefit.

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

DC I like your posts

'School haven't been built because both political parties talk big on education put prioritise it somewhere below supporting the cheese industry' oh sooooo true! Can we add 'talk big on education and getting mothers back into the workforce'?

as for English not first language... I agree... my kids are bilingual but once entering school English took over ;)

[Freckle]

I understand that there is a 7 year limit on any restrictions. So perhaps the government can take this time to ensure that the infrastructure is there to support these additional workers rather than expecting the existing services which are already overburdened to take on yet more responsibility.

[justaphase]

I think the whole ban on working is plain populism.

The population of these two countries taken together is by 10m less than that of Poland alone, not to mention thwe other 10 or so countries that joined at the same time.

Most of the people that woould come would do so to work. They tend to be young, enterpreneurial people, ones that every country should be delighted to have in its workforce. They will tend to work, pay taxes, not use the NHS so much (as they tend to be young and healthy) or the school system (as the majority do not have kids).
They also help keep wage inflation down which is goood for the economy.

Letting these people into the country and bannning them from working will just force them into the black economy - so they will not pay taxes etc. and they will be forced to take ridiculously low pay - so they will undercut the honest, hard working locals. Why force them to do this?

When I first came to this country I worked illigally too. Am I ashamed to admit it? NO!!!! It is a crime?????? I was not steealing fgs, I was WORKING. And I was being paid 2.50ph by the by the b for 12 hours of work per day, 6 days per week. Now this is a crime.

OK, running for cover now.

[ruty]

i am undecided on the government's present policy. On the one hand it does seem unfair and hypocritical. On the other hand I would like to know though how many people here have actually spent time in Romania or Bulgaria. I have spent time in Romania living and working. Living standards in these countries are so utterly low, and corruption is so rife [Poland is like Sweden in comparison] that i can see potential problems. The Albanian mafia already runs a few things in London rather successfully. Many people from Romania and Bulgaria will be young hard working people of course, but i think it is a bit rose tinted spectacle-ish to expect no problems to come with the transition.

[justaphase]

Yes, but the Albanian mafia is here illigally.

This is exactly the point, these measure are only going to stop the young, hard working people, not the criminals.

It is plain stupid.

[MrsBeDreadingTrickOrTreat]

justaphase, you mentioning that you worked for next to nothing is the problem I'm envisaging... nothing to do with illegal working I mean, however, e.g. for people like me minimum wage isn't feasible due to commitments, but someone coming e.g. from Bulgaria/Romania, that is a lot of money. Great for them, bad for 'locals'... not lamenting that they're coming in to 'steal our jobs' as here's hoping they won't be as skilled/good in 'my' job area but ... I'm certain there will be enough people around who will see it that way and hence some kind of 'hatred' will emenate (sp?)

am I making any sense here? I'm tired and my head hurts because I've been trying to find a new job without much success.

[ruty]

not sure justaphase, think it will make criminal activity easier, harder to spot and more diverse. Hope I'm wrong tho.