Second class citizens

While Romanians and Bulgarians have been free to enter the UK since January 2007, they do so without the right to work which has enabled our Polish bakers to get cheese twists onto supermarket shelves every morning. Worse still, the legislation appears to have done little to control immigration from Romania and Bulgaria. Despite setting limits of 20,000 permits, statistics published in May this year already estimated the total influx of Romanians and Bulgarians at around the 50,000 mark – already nearing the 56,000 figure predicted by the Institute for Public Policy Research for 2007. While this is less than Migration Watch's obscenely hyped figures, a stab at even the simplest mental maths suggests that more Romanian citizens in Britain are stuck outside of legitimate employment than there are card-carrying workers.

It's when individuals are excluded from the world of employment that one finds higher levels of begging and people being housed in appalling accommodation. It's a situation Michael Luby, national sales manager at the Big Issue is familiar with. "It's unbelievable," he said: "we're seeing Romanian people come over here expecting work, only to find that they don't get access to the housing, benefits and services any other people get. I'm just proud the Big Issue is there to pick up the pieces."

But for problems being felt mainly at a local level, these are ones Edinburgh City Council seem ill positioned to address. Responding to questions about Romanian immigration post-accession, Councillor for Leith Walk, Louise Lang was evasive: "I don't pay attention to the nationality of anyone begging on the streets. Quite simply, one person on the streets is too many." Closer to an admission of the problem—if not a solution—came from head of corporate services, Nick Croft, who acknowledged, "it is an issue the council and the police are aware of and are looking into."

Given that it is under UK law that these restrictions are imposed, members of the European Parliament are similarly powerless to deal with the situation. As Elspeth Atwooll, MEP for Scotland laments: "the EU wishes to move towards a common immigration and asylum policy, but the extent to which the UK is part of this depends on the use they make of opt-outs to the Lisbon Treaty."

And so it seems that both Romanians and Bulgarians alike—European citizens—are caught in a legislative limbo. Rather than being forced out of legitimate employment into exploitative work or criminal activity, it's better for individuals to be co-opted into a system which gives migrant workers employment rights, and authorities accurate employment statistics.

Aside from giving the Home Office a chance to improve their strike rate on their immigration figures, it places local councils in a much better position to be clear about the levels of service and care they can reasonably provide and to whom they are being expected to provide for. Armed with this information, the UK can begin to do a better job of catering for its citizens – old and new.