UK counts workers who enter this country but not those who leave, so oft-quoted figures are far from accurate
Why are they here?
In the 1990s first John Major and then Robin Cook toured eastern Europe to persuade the new ex-communist states to join the EU as part of their "wider not deeper" European strategy to assuage the Eurosceptics. In 2004 eight eastern European countries, including Poland, joined the EU – the Accession 8 or A8. The worker registration scheme (WRS) was set up to regulate their access to the labour market and restrict access to benefits.
How many have come?
By the end of 2009 there was a cumulative total of 1,041,315 registrations under the scheme. This has been portrayed as the largest wave of migration to Britain in recent history. But these are gross cumulative figures and include many Poles who come each year on short-term contract work – for example, spending the summer months working in the agriculture processing industry – and then return home. Of those surveyed, 62% said they were in Britain for less than three months.
As the WRS does not count who goes home, it is impossible to say how many are still here. But recent studies argue that at least 50% have returned to Poland as the country's economy has expanded and the zloty strengthened.
Far from being a new wave of long-term immigration leading to settlement, the movement – according to migration experts – has primarily been of short-term circular migrants commuting on cheap air routes such as Ryanair. Also following a circular route are many of the 1 million Britons who live and work elsewhere in the EU. British companies say eastern Europeans work harder and are willing to do the jobs Britons won't, but trade unions argue they have been used to undercut wages.
But they said it would only be 13,000?
This estimate was made by Professor John Salt, University College London, who based it on what happened when Spain and Portugal joined the EU and assumed that all the other countries would open their doors to A8 nationals as well. It was decided after the estimate was published that only Britain, Ireland and Sweden would open their doors to A8 workers. Labour argued it was better they come legally than illegally.
So what happened to British jobs for British workers?
More than two million new jobs have been created since 1997. Employment of UK citizens has risen by 1.2 million to 26.6 million. Estimates from the Office of National Statistics which suggest that 97% of new jobs have gone to foreign-born workers are misleading as they include many British citizens who were born abroad but grew up here.
But haven't they put our welfare system under intolerable pressure?
Most who came were young – 78% aged between 18 and 34 – and only 5% brought school-age children with them. The Home Office says they have gone where the work is, filling gaps in the labour market in administration, agriculture, hospitality and catering, and food, fish and meat-processing. Whitehall says they have made few demands on the welfare system, with just 7,000 successfully claiming tax-funded income related benefits last year.
But the arrival of Polish workers did put some regions under severe strain – especially Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, which had little experience of rapid population change. Only belatedly did Labour recognise this by setting up a migration impact fund but the Treasury refused to fund it, leaving it to be paid for by an inadequate levy on new migrants.
Are they still coming now?
The numbers declined sharply in the recession. In the final quarter of 2009 there were 28,000 new registrations under the WRS compared with 52,000 in the same period of 2007.
With Germany and other countries opening their borders to Polish workers from 2011 the numbers are expected to fall further.
The Guardian
