Hark, hark the dogs do bark

The beggars are coming to town. This is the warning being made by the German Association of Cities in a report examining the negative impact of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria since 2006. During the intervening years, it is estimated that some 159,000 Romanian and 90,000 Bulgarian citizens have arrived in Germany, accompanied by what the Daily Telegraph describes as ‘a rise in organised crime’. What these figures fail to tease out of course is the percentage of these immigrants that happens to be Roma. Whereas many other Romanian and Bulgarian citizens will have upped sticks in search of legitimate employment, it would seem that this is not the preferred option for a very significant, if not a preponderant, element within the Roma.

Four German cities have been singled out as ‘struggling to cope’ with the influx: Berlin, Dortmund, Hamburg and Hanover. The immigrants generally do not speak German, are low skilled and place significant economic and social strains upon the receiving cities, leading to a situation in which  “The social balance and social peace is extremely endangered.” Depressing, yet refreshingly frank words and analysis. Why should Germany have to put up with this and bear these costs? Why should the UK have to allow a similar human ingress, following the removal of restrictions on immigration from Romania and Bulgaria on 1 January this year? Not one more unskilled labourer of any type is required, and we certainly need no more beggars. We are in the depths of a protracted recession, or more accurately, depression, and the arrival of such people can only serve to exacerbate existing problems and bring new ones. Migration Watch was right to caution that up to 70,000 per annum could arrive from these countries, and yet the Prime Minister ‘promises’ us an EU referendum in 2017 or 2018, thereby ensuring open borders until at least that date. What good is that?

Last year it was revealed that The Big Issue had been colluding in a scam allowing Roma immigration from Bulgaria and Romania by classing Roma Big Issue vendors as ‘self-employed’, leading in some parts of the country to them constituting 80% of all those selling the magazine. Alas, the courts adjudged this scam to be legitimate, and to be in full accord with the law. For most of us, this appears to be the straightforward abuse of a magazine that was purportedly established to help the homeless get back on their feet, and save enough money to gain accommodation of some sort.

For politicians however, the Roma issue is not big at all, but rather invisible. Criticise Roma criminality (‘culture’) and dark allusions will be made to a certain policy carried out on the continent some 70 years or so ago, yet look at the statistics and it is plain to see why so many Roma condemn themselves, or elect to follow, a life on the margins of society if not outright criminality. In Bulgaria for example, statistics from 2007 show that only between 60-77% of Roma children were enrolled in school education (ages 6-15) compared to 90-94% of ethnic Bulgarians, with only 6-12% of Roma enrolling in further education (16-19). If basic education is deliberately neglected to such an extent, how can the Bulgarian Roma hope for their children to find any form of legitimate employment when they become adults?

Official census data states that in 2001 Bulgaria was home to 370,908 Roma and Romania to 535,140 in 2002, so there would seem to be a large pool of prospective migrants. It will therefore be understandable that owing to the politically correct strictures of reporting in this country that ethnic Bulgarians and Romanians will be tearing their hair out in years to come, reading and viewing report after report, in which their good name is blackened thanks to a significant element within their Roma export. 

David Cameron: a globalist advocate of open borders

David Cameron’s forthcoming EU Speech: Great Expectations?

The Conservative Party currently appears to be in overdrive in its effort to undermine the threat from UKIP, with many leading members taking care to use language that could be mistaken for Euroscepticism by the electorate, whilst in the main remaining resolutely pro-EU. Even the Prime Minister himself, an undoubted Euro-enthusiast, has now been compelled by a solidifying Euroscepticism amongst a section of the British electorate to hint at concessions to public opinion on this score, coyly intimating that a referendum could eventually be in the offing. However, nothing could be further from his intentions than allowing the UK to leave the EU, and any referendum that may eventually be set before us (which in itself is doubtful) would be likely to be rigged in its wording. Nonetheless, anything less than full-blooded Euro-enthusiasm causes the BBC to balk, and thus it is that Cameron’s comment that he wishes to seek a “fresh settlement” between our country and the EU is sufficient for the BBC to take this as being tantamount to the ravings of a xenophobic Little Englander.

In his interview on this morning’s Today Programme, Cameron refused to divulge what he would say in his speech to be delivered in the Netherlands next week, although he stressed his globalist economic credentials by making reference to the UK’s “strong tradition of global trade”. Throughout the interview, the emphasis was very much upon rationalising EU via reference to economic imperatives, whilst ignoring the option of leaving the EU and negotiating mutually beneficial trading arrangements with members of the bloc. Neither the Prime Minister nor his interviewer touched upon the aspects of EU membership to which electors undoubtedly have not given their consent, such as ever-increasing and deeper political union and the intent to eventually form an economic union with the Muslim states of North Africa and the Middle East founded upon the principles of Euromed. There are many non-economic costs to EU membership, and the free movement of labour between member states has in recent years caused many problems in the UK by placing increased pressure upon housing, education and health, whilst undermining domestic wages and helping to entrench long-term structural unemployment. This is not something that either the BBC or Cameron are keen to publicise.

This month witnesses the end of transitional controls on the right of Bulgarian and Romanian citizens to come and work and settle in the UK. Although Cameron was pressed on this matter in this morning’s interview, he refused to provide an estimate of how many people are expected to arrive from these two EU member states. However, with a combined population of roughly 26.3 million and far lower average wages than the UK, it would not be unreasonable, taking into account previous experience with immigration from Poland, Slovakia and other EU accession states, for a wave of several hundred thousand immigrants to arrive. Where, when we have a housing crisis, will they live, and what will they do for a living as we struggle with mass unemployment in the depths of a protracted recession arising from our structurally unbalanced and globalised economy? These are questions that neither the Prime Minister nor the BBC are willing to answer, for they reveal one of the many economically and, importantly, socially costly negative consequences of remaining a member of the EU. Withdrawal from the EU would help us to manage our immigration problem, but that alone would not enable us to solve it completely.

When Cameron delivers his speech on the EU next week it will, like the many speeches delivered by leading politicians on this issue, be more or less interchangeable with those of the leaders of the other two major Westminster parties, whose motto may as well be “In the EU and globalism we trust”. Of one thing we can be sure: Cameron’s speech will be an anticlimax, and any great expectations that some voters may possess regarding the Conservative Party’s intent to allow a meaningful referendum upon EU membership will be dashed; these expectations will remain, like the book of that title, fiction.

Your new neighbours? Romania's Roma