Migration, mobility and an ‘undesirable’ report

More than two years after the British decision to open the UK labour market to workers from eight new member states in Central Eastern Europe, some Home Office officials seem to be taking a different stance on Bulgaria and Romania. Denislava Simeonova of EURACTIV’s Bulgarian partner portal ‘Dnevnik’ comments.

Just two weeks ago, a high-ranking official with the UK Permanent Representation to the EU briefed journalists in Brussels on the positive effects for the British economy from granting labour market access to the new EU members. Despite the attempts of the media to urge public discontent, 375,000 East Europeans have moved and filled vacant workplaces in economic sectors that had been lagging behind, Giles Dickson said on 12 July 2006. 

On many occasions, the Commission has cited the UK as an example to EU countries like Germany and France which decided to extend transition periods during which workers from the new EU members are excluded from their labour markets.

In this situation, a leaked report from the UK Home Office sends quite a different signal. According to the report by Joan Ryan, under-secretary for migration, quoted by the Sunday Times, the UK has already accepted 600,000 citizens fom the eight new members countries, a number which is almost double the official data. Implicitly, the report seems to criticize the government for underestimating the number of those who wanted to come to the UK prior to enlargement.

The paper does not seem to see the newcomers as a positive contribution to the economy, but as a “wave which could provoke a public backlash”. It cites “enlargement fatigue” as the main reason for a change in citizens’ attitudes towards immigrants.

As a solution, the newspaper suggests that “ministers are considering refusing Bulgarians and Romanians the right to work in Britain” after accession. This is the safest way, the paper seems to suggest, of preventing potential criminals from coming to Britain. The Sunday Times  reports that a ‘warning index’ has been drawn up, according to which a minimum of 45,000 “undesirable” Bulgarians and Romanians, most of them suspected of having “criminal associations or posing a security risk”, are eager to come to the UK.

The British government has warned Bulgaria many times on high levels of crime and corruption and on the ‘export’ of criminals to the EU. This is why Bulgarian citizens still need to get a visa to travel to the UK. However, since the visa regime will be automatically cancelled after accession, identification of possible offenders will become difficult. Therefore it will become harder to prevent them from entering and to expel them, the unders-secretary explains. 

One more argument is put forward: Bulgarian and Romanian citizens will be more “visible” in Britain than people from other Eastern European countries because unlike Poles, for example, “they have less well established communities there”. 

Visible to whom? To British people? Could you imagine Bulgarians and Romanians being that conspicuous, taking into account the diversity of nationalities in the UK? Or are they the only law offenders among all the foreigners there? 

Or rather visible to politicians? Because the immigrant card is often a political trump in most EU countries which still cannot engage in a common immigration policy, the reason being that separate political parties prefer to keep the trump-card and use it on their own?  

Globalisation and economy restructuring follow a pace that goes beyond any political agenda. While the Commission tries to convince EU citizens that changing workplaces is good for the economy, thousands of employees are fired or displaced, and even more people are needed in particular sectors of the common market. With EU citizens from old members reluctant to move and fill vacancies (only 2% work in a country other than their country of origin), migrant workers from the East should be most welcome in Western economies. 

Barriers have never stopped anyone from migrating, but reports such as the one leaked from the Home Office report can bring back an almost forgotten feeling of being ‘undesirable’.

Read this comment in Bulgarian here.