The Price of Immigration
From the desk of The Brussels Journal on Wed, 2007-08-22 15:33
A quote from The Daily Mail, 22 August 2007
Benefit claims by Eastern Europeans [in Britain] have almost trebled in the past year, official figures show. The cost of the payouts - to almost 112,000 migrants - is put at £125million a year. The Home Office figures mean that one in six of an estimated 683,000 Eastern European incomers is living off the state to some extent. A year ago, only 42,620 were claiming benefits. [...]
Once a migrant has been working here for 12 months, they are entitled to the same level of support as any British citizen. Many Poles are drawn by generous handouts for parents who, in some cases, can claim benefits for children who remain in their homeland.
A quote from The Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2007
In the second quarter of this year, the number of asylum applicants removed because they were not considered legitimate refugees declined by more than a third compared to the same period last year. There were 3,280 deported compared with 5,260 in the same period last year - and many of those went voluntarily with financial help.
It means that a ''priority'' Government target to remove more failed asylum seekers than there are new applicants has been missed. The Home Office blamed the fall on the diversion of officials to the deportation of foreign criminals rather than would-be refugees.
However, recent figures showed that just one fifth of the 1,000 foreign national prisoners who were released without being considered for deportation have been thrown out of the country.
A quote from the leader of The Times, 22 August 2007
Only last month Gordon Brown insisted that all foreign criminals “will be deported”. Yet under EU law, the Government has known for three years that it has no such powers. [...] As the Home Office solicitor complained at the hearing, so long as the criminal has lived in this country for five years or more – whether or not at Her Majesty’s Pleasure – Britain “could never deport a lifer who had been released from prison and was an EU citizen”.
12 Months Later
Submitted by Lancelot Owen on Wed, 2007-08-22 17:38.
The fact that so many recent economic migrants are now claiming welfare benefits in Britain seems to have caught the government by surprise.
We have been repeatedly told by our politicians that migrant workers are ‘hard-working’ and possess a far greater work ethic than native Britons who, they correctly point out, would far rather sit idle on welfare than work.
The idea that many of these economic migrants are ‘hard-working’ and possess a far greater work ethic than native Britons only because they are not entitled to the same welfare benefits as native Britons [and not because they possess some hard-working gene] seems not to have entered their head.
As well as showing up their worryingly poor understanding of human nature [something all too common amongst our political class] it also illustrates their complete failure to recognise the corrupting influence of universal welfare on all people, wherever they may come from. As more migrants become entitled to welfare payments, after being here for 12 months, more migrants will claim them. Duuhhhh!!!!
Even worse may be to come. How many of these ‘hard-working’ people will be able to resist the lure of welfare benefits and a job on the side like so many of the natives they speak to in the pub? Not many is my guess.
"Once a migrant has been
Submitted by dethule on Wed, 2007-08-22 16:27.
"Once a migrant has been working here for 12 months, they are entitled to the same level of support as any British citizen."
Very odd, indeed. The UK cares financially for other states' citizens, even goes so far as to put their legal benefit claims on a par with its native Britons'. I doubt there are monetary compensation claims with respect to their state of origin.
Yeah, I know, one world.
Yet, what seems most preposterous is the EUcrats' interference with British law. This exemplifies the growing magnitude of totalitarianism within the EU.