Thursday, February 07, 2013

Influx of Bulgarian/ Romanian migrants to Britain/Migration

Britain's government is showing hostility towards Romanian's and Bulgarian's who are migrating to Britain in search of jobs and a more stable life. According to Nikolay Mladenov, Britain would not be one of the top countries that Bulgarian's would migrate to for work. Their first choices would be Spain,France and/or Italy due to the similarity in linguistics. Nikolay Mladenov made a remark towards Britain saying that Britain "should be grateful to Romanian construction workers without whom London's Olympic Village would not have been built last year". According to this article, in the next year all 25 European Union countries will be obligated to open their labor markets to the Bulgarian's and Romanian's who had signed into the union in 2007. Britain however is not  the only European Union country that has concerns regarding the influx of migrants coming in, Germany has similar concerns. In Der Spiegel, a German weekly, an associated press stated that Germany is worried about the so called "poverty-migration" where the Romanians end up living in decrepit conditions and living inside places that are ready to become demolished. Some policymakers fear that Bulgarian and Romanian migrants will cause crime rates to rise in Britain and Germany because of the stories they have heard from the Western European press;however, there is no evidence to support this accusation.

Bulgarian's and Romanian's have faced hardships recovering from economic disasters in their own countries and are seeking to locate elsewhere. They are searching for jobs to support their families and provide more than they could have before. Migrating to Britain was not their first choice, but because the labor market had opened up they were allowed to find work. Although it seems that according to this article in the next year all 25 European Union countries will open up their labor markets there will be a higher volume of migrants. There will be more opportunities available for these migrants as they settle down and start a new life. There is one major issue that I believe will be caused by the opening of labor markets; which includes over crowding and possibly over population depending on the types of jobs that will be available to the migrants. This problem could cause distress not just among the people, but also among the government officials.

Bojana Krupljanin
February 7,2013 
8:42PM

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21571453-rich-eu-countries-fret-over-all-romanians-and-bulgarians-heading-their-way-next-wave

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