The number of East Europeans coming to work in Britain since 2004 may be 50% higher than previously thought, a BBC Two Newsnight survey suggests.
The survey of 500 Poles in the UK found 64% had signed the workers' register.
Official figures show 375,000 workers have registered since the EU expanded in May 2004 but the survey suggests 187,000 more may have come to the UK.
The Tories said it showed ministers had "dramatically" underestimated the scale of immigration from new EU countries.
And here's the killer bit. The spin a couple of years back was not only that very small numbers would be involved, but that they'd be bright young things who'd stay for a while, make some money and go home.
"The government originally estimated just 15,000 people a year would migrate to the UK from Eastern Europe when it agreed to admit workers from the new accession countries such as Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Latvia.
But among the Polish workers questioned, 30% said they had not signed the workers' register and the remaining 6% had never heard of it.
The survey, by the Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism at the Universities of Surrey and Roehampton, also indicated many more Polish people were intending to stay in Britain long-term or even permanently than previously thought.
More than 40% said they wanted to stay at least two years, and 15% - more than one in seven - had already decided to move here permanently.
Only one in three definitely intended to go home within two years. Nearly a third were planning to bring their families to Britain or had already done so."
I've said it before - I'll say it again.
"The fact that these new Brits are polite and hard-working, do not do crack or firearms, nor are they likely to blow up Tube trains, is a function of the culture they have arrived with. It tells us nothing about what their first and second generation descendents will be like after twenty years exposure to the cultural vacuum of the UK."
Local Council Efficiency
7 hours ago
8 comments:
"It tells us nothing about what their first and second generation descendents will be like after twenty years exposure to the cultural vacuum of the UK"
we'd better start adopting the American melting-pot approach so - sharpish.
Don't you mean Aztlan melting pot ?
The melting pot is all very well, if you have a culture to assimilate to. The problem is, we haven't. The sixties kids have spent the last 40 years destroying the previous culture - which was patriotic, based on Christianity, and socially conservative whether you were right or left - while not having anything to replace it with.
All lefties will now spout about 'British values'. Unfortunately they can only name one - 'tolerance', i.e. not repressing OTHER cultures. Not a sturdy foundation for a nation.
Laban is spot on. The 'melting pot' was the pre-multiculturalism era. America was a majority white christian country, with a self confident culture. Immigrants had to accept assimilation into that culture.
In modern America you can do anything in Spanish, talk to officials, talk to Spanish speaking operators within call centres, watch Spanish language TV, surf the web for Spanish sites. The fact is Mexicans don't need to know even a word of English.
Mass immigration and globalism makes intergration and assimilation words of the past.
From travels in Eastern Europe, I have found that the people over there are like we used to be. Any chance of exporting ours and importing theirs en masse?
michaelcd - but look at S.Korea, Japan, China. I dont want to be like them exactly but there is nothing inevitable about being swamped, theyve shown that.
Not long ago the Philipines urged Japan to take Filipino workers, that Japan 'needed' them. The arrogance of it! The Philipines lecturing Japan about economics - what a joke!
The Japanese declined this advice of course.
The survey of 500 Poles in the UK found 64% had signed the workers' register.
That only indicates that 180 had not signed the register..........and extrapolation from that depends on how statistically significant the 500 sample size was.
It may be that that group of 500 had high levels of registration and the next 500 might only have had 10 register in which case immigration could be 50 times the registered figure.
Oh why do I live in an innumerate society ?
From my experience most Poles are hard working and inherently honest but they seem to overlook Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic etc. How many of their citizens are here?
Oh and while we are at it how many asylum seekers from these countries are still here collecting benefits?
Having worked in Dover I have seen first hand hundreds turn up every week looking for a new life. Now they don't even need the bogus excuse of asylum anymore.
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