Romanians and Bulgarians already heading for the UK

The Daily Fail is reporting that all flights and buses from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK are fully booked for weeks with one airline charging £3k for a one-way ticket.

In just a few hours, immigration controls will be lifted for Romanian and Bulgarians and hundreds of thousands of the poorest people in the EU are expected to come to the UK.  Those claiming to be self employed will be entitled to benefits from the day they arrive whilst access to the health and education services are available to all from day one.

That eastern Europeans have an excellent work ethic isn't really in dispute- the problem is that there aren't enough jobs to go around the people who already live here without flooding the job market with low paid immigrant labour, no matter how skilled or hard working they are.

The line taken by the left is that working immigrants pay tax and contribute positively to the economy but they conveniently ignore the fact that every newly arrived immigrant that finds work is depriving someone who already lives here of a job so unless that newly-arrived immigrant is earning enough to pay the cost of the services the state provides them as well as the cost of providing services and benefits to an unemployed person they are costing the taxpayer money.

The minimum wage in Romania and Bulgaria is £135 and £115 respectively; in the UK it's over £990. It's not hard to see why the UK is so attractive to people who want to work and with one of the easiest and most generous social security systems it's obvious why the UK is so attractive to people who don't.

The empty promises David Cameron made to bring in last minute restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians to protect the economy came to nothing as expected - another worthless Cast Iron Guarantee™. The promises to charge immigrants for using the NHS and make them wait before they can claim benefits are similarly worthless when the EU is already taking the UK to court for breaching EU laws requiring immigrants from other EU member states to have the same access to benefits as people already living here.

The simple fact is, we can't do anything to tackle the imminent influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants or the detrimental impact they will have on jobs, services and the economy whilst we remain members of the EU and only UKIP will take us out.