Immigration nonsense

8.03.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 24th Aug 2006

The Home Office have released figures showing 447,000 eastern Europeans have officially come to Britain looking for work over the past two years. Their original estimate was 26,000! So how come there were so far apart, and is this immigration a problem?

Well the Home Office simple guessed, I am no expert but I could have guessed it would have be higher. One of the problems of the underestimation is that no one will now believe whatever figures the Government make up regarding Romania and Bulgaria.

Most of the 447,000 have no long-term plans to settle in the UK, many were in temporary jobs and have already left, most others when asked have said they would stay for under two years. Indeed if you look more deeply of people moving to a country for more than four years the UK has a net loss of people.

As someone who has worked overseas, I had a six-month working visa in Australia, I can honestly say it benefited me. I suspect working in the UK is benefiting those eastern Europeans who have taken the opportunity to come to the UK.

But does it benefit the UK? Again I suspect it does, most of those here from eastern Europe are mainly doing poorly paid jobs that we find hard to fill - like the Poles driving buses in the West Midlands. We as a country also benefit if this immigration is really only for a few years, and that remains to be seen, by collecting tax revenues not paying out benefits or pensions in later years (and associated costs of health care). In my opinion its also a good thing to have a mix of cultures around to make us a better society.