s former foreign affairs minister has criticised the "mass hysteria" surrounding the immigration debate driven by the "far-right". Nikolay Mladenov, who was Bulgaria's foreign affairs minister until last spring, said claims of a sudden influx of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants to Britain in 2014 were "politically motivated". Mladenov, who is now the UN Special Representative for Iraq, told the BBC's...
s ambassador to Britain has mocked MPs and rightwing newspapers that gathered at airports on New Year's Day to interrogate an expected influx of his countrymen, comparing them to tragicomic characters from Samuel Beckett's masterpiece Waiting for Godot. Ion Jinga said that politicians and journalists at Luton airport were desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of unemployed Romanians only...
Guardian readers from Romania and Bulgaria with experience of working in the UK react to the media furore over the recent lifting of immigration restrictions. Guardian readers James Walsh ...
s Day flight from Romania. His moment of fame is over and he vanishes into the shadowlands of Britain's serf-labour force. He joins that great army of the underpaid to clean, care and cater. Briefly, he stood in Luton arrivals as a woolly-hatted emblem for a host of issues that reflect none too well on the state of Britain: anti-immigration fever, Europhobia, benefit-scrounging hysteria, a living reminder...
n' mix arrangement with other countries, with no repercussions for international trade or millions of Brits living outside the UK. The fiction that a country can be a more effective player on the global stage by becoming insular and xenophobic. The insidious fiction that what stood between us and prosperity was a hypothetical Bulgarian. No doubt it will be claimed that measures, taken at the eleventh...
Cross-party group calls for calm dialogue after Tory council leader blames Roma in London for disruption and crime Phil Disley ...
s this minority one is really concerned about but it is this minority that has this really big impact." Roma make up a tiny proportion of the population of Romania and Bulgaria but some politicians have concentrated their warnings about the end of transitional controls on the potential for more to enter Britain. This week an adviser to the Romanian prime minister hit back at scare stories, arguing...
s Day, David Hanson, the shadow immigration minister, said the government has ignored calls to strengthen existing legislation that could stop employers from undercutting British employees' wages by recruiting from overseas. His comments came as the first Romanians and Bulgarians with unrestricted access to the UK labour market began to arrive amid a deepening political row. All political parties are...
Now that Romanian and Bulgarian citizens are able to move to the UK to seek work, an alliance of Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrats has warned that politicians' anti-Roma rhetoric is already inflaming community tensions. Has this debate helped those planning to migrate to the UK feel welcome? ...
s here to work, hasn't heard of the NHS and aims to return home 'very soon with a lot of money' Whatever Victor Spirescu's dreams of arriving in the UK from Transylvania entailed, it is doubtful they included coffee with the Labour MP Keith Vaz surrounded by TV cameras and microphones minutes after he touched down at Luton airport. But as one of a tiny handful of Romanians on board Wizz Air flight...
s needed is protection at work and a crash housing programme It's the influx that never was. New Year's Day, we were told by rightwing politicians and press, would be the day the floodgates opened. Romanians and Bulgarians, free at last to work in Britain without restrictions, would come in their hordes. Beggars and benefit scroungers would be battering on our doors. The country would be swamped. But...
Recently we asked Romanians to show us more about themselves and their country. Now we'd like to find out what Romanians – and Bulgarians – think about the UK. Share your experiences of living or working in the UK via GuardianWitness Caroline Bannock Guardian readers ...
As we wanted to know more about Romania, we asked Romanians to share perspectives of themselves and their country via GuardianWitness. Here are some of them Caroline Bannock Guardian readers ...
Populist politicians' attempts to fan the flames of hatred rely on our hardwired suspicion of outsiders Romanians and Bulgarians will gain the same rights as other EU citizens to move to Britain from 1 January . But for months the British media have been running alarmist reports about the imminent influx from these countries. What is it about this group of people that makes them seemingly so dangerous...
s borders are opened to immigrants from the two newest EU countries. Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, spoke out after 90 Tory activists wrote to the prime minister urging him to apply emergency powers before controls on immigration from the eastern European countries end on New Year's Day. In a letter to David Cameron, the Tory grassroots campaigners said the government had the ability to stop...
t want to stay away long. She just went there to make money for me and my sister," said Cristina, a nine-year-old who lives with her grandmother when her mother is away. Many find themselves missing regular emotional or physical support as they grow. "These children are in a very vulnerable situation, being deprived of their parents' affection, care and support," said Andreea Biji, a psychologist who...
Conservative grassroots writes open letter to David Cameron arguing UK is in "exceptional economic circumstances" ...
s smart yet waspish essays straddle the divide between high and low culture, while the Romanian-born Herta Müller deftly describes the horrors of Ceausescu's rule Keats or Dylan? A key aspect of the mid-20th century was the quarrel between popular and serious culture. In his 1941 essay England Your England , George Orwell sought to define Englishness through a scrutiny of seaside picture postcards....
s central university district. "That little line at the bottom of the job ads, you know? The one that says: 'Apply only if you are eligible to work in the UK.' We won't need to worry about it any more. Because, well, we will be. Eligible." An engaging 23-year-old with a first-class computer sciences degree from Essex University, Vernescu came back to Romania last year to look after an ailing aunt who...
m a huge follower of Manchester United. I also studied Wittgenstein at university and he stayed in Cambridge for most of his professional life. I think I have a cultural affinity with the UK. It wasn't at all hard to find work, and within a month I had found a job in a coffee shop in north London. Unfortunately, although they had promised to sort out the paperwork, a year later they had a phonecall...