Thursday, May 10, 2007

"Non-visible ethnic communities"

I find it hard to keep up with the jargon. Hot on the heels of the Poles, lauded by all as hard-working types, come the Romanians, lauded by ...

1,600 officers in Westminster have been issued with a ten-point guide to the Romanian language so they can communicate more effectively with Eastern Europeans seen acting suspiciously.

"The number of East European immigrants in Great Britain has risen with 25% after the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the European Union, a survey of the British government points out. According to the study from the beginning of the year, each month in Great Britain arrive 50 thousand citizens of the two new EU-member states. In the first three months of 2006, the number of immigrants in Great Britain from the then eight East European new member-states was 540 thousand people. In the same period of time this year, i.e. after the accession of Bulgaria and Romania, the number has reached 680 thousand people."

In fairness I must point out that the 680,000 mentioned on the Bulgarian news site aren't "immigrants", they're people from Eastern Europe arriving in the UK - mostly in England. They may all be tourists for all we know. As people leaving the UK aren't recorded, we have no way of knowing.
They may all have left, apart from the Demitrie family of Slough.

6 comments:

Martin said...

Laban,

Have you got any Romanian 'Big Issue' vendors yet?

Anonymous said...

Wait till the economy tanks then you'll see the true extent of the problem.

Easy credit is floating lots of boats at present....come the crunch and see just how many newcomers qualify for in-work and out-of-work benefirts after 12 months residence and compete wages further downwards

Anonymous said...

Does the title mean that the minorities are "non-visible" or that any sense of community among them is?

Anonymous said...

Absolutely crazy numbers.

I was just reading the latest National Geographic, its partly about the colonisation of America. Here are the numbers.
Year 1500: 1 million 'Indian' approx

Year 1650: 379,000 Indians, 58,000 Europeans, 1,600 Africans.

Year 1800: 178,000 Indians, 4,763,000 European, 1,002,000 Africans

The 'Indians' didn't fight the English at first partly because the English built their camp in such a bad place that the Indians thought they would die on their own without a fight. But they didn't realised that the English which had a rapidly increasing population at the time could just keep sending more settlers no matter how many died.

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

martin

Interesting you mention that: insofar as I am able to recognise traditional Roma garb, there was certainly a Rumanian flogging "Big Issue" outside Marks and Sparks in Muswell Hill this afternoon.

Anonymous said...

http://tinyurl.com/2n97h2

Saturday, 12 May 2007,

"Europe children flood into Slough

A Berkshire town has been struggling to cope with nearly 90 children who have arrived unaccompanied from Eastern Europe."