Immigration From Eastern Europe

At a recent conference on immigration issues held at CMS Cameron McKenna’s offices, Jack Dromey, the Secretary General of the TUC, told a poignant story about a complaint he had received from trade union leaders concerning the use of Polish workers in various building projects in London. He said that after listening to a verbal tirade against these workers, he was able to remind both officials that they were Irish and exactly the same complaints had been made against their grandfathers when they came to work in the UK – without benevolent UK immigration policies they would not be there today.

In May 2004 the European union was enlarged to take 10 countries. 73 million Eastern European citizens joined. Britain and Ireland were the only countries to offer full work and benefit rights to their citizens. Most other EU countries insisted on keeping borders closed for up to 7 years. A European Commission spokesman at the time said, "All our studies show that there will be a fairly limited