Foreign students contribute up to £14bn a year to the British economy. That some are now opting not to come here because they do not feel welcome is cause for grave concern Don't expect much soul searching this side of the election. Which is a shame because there is a good deal to be done. A great many activists and newspapers and politicians will want to reflect on the hysteria they caused late last...
An apparent surge in the number of Romanians and Bulgarians coming to Britain is likely to prove incendiary as the European elections approach More than 30,000 extra Romanians and Bulgarians are working in Britain compared with a year ago, official Labour Force Survey figures to be published on Wednesday are expected to show. But this 25%-plus rise in their presence of the British workforce does not...
122,000 Bulgarians and Romanians are now working in the UK, 3,000 fewer than when visa restrictions were in force At the end of last year the Daily Mail splashed on a story claiming that all flights from Romania and Bulgaria were booked up , with jobseekers from those countries piling into the UK to take advantage of their newly achieved free movement through the EU. Those claims were later more or...
Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander says figures 'give the lie to Ukip's scaremongering on immigration' Read the ONS statistics The number of Romanians and Bulgarians working in Britain has gone down since border controls on them were fully lifted in January, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) . The first official numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK workforce undermine...
Ukip leader says Britain has opened doors to countries that 'have not recovered from communism' The enlargement of the EU to include former Warsaw Pact countries such as Romania has created a "gateway for organised crime", the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has said. As more damaging details emerged about the views of Ukip candidates, Farage admitted his party had made mistakes in its selection...
This is one of those crazy things that can happen to undercover journalists engaging in a spot of subterfuge. Two Sunday Times investigative reporters, Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake, set out to discover whether it was possible to purchase a Bulgarian baby. Continue reading... ...
A €10bn aid package for Greece has been agreed – the first was €110bn – but why would businesses stay in the country? Every time Akis Agorastos drives back over the border from Bulgaria to Serres, the northern Greek town where he was born, his blood pressure rises a little. The shuttered shops, myriad "for rent" signs, derelict factories and empty streets fill him with gloom. "Anger and sadness overwhelm...
Throughout last year there were forecasts in several national newspapers that Britain was about to be inundated by migrants from Romania and Bulgaria. The reports became increasingly hysterical towards the end of 2013. For example, The Sun carried this in November: "A tidal wave of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants is threatening to swamp Britain" . The following month, the Daily Express quoted an...
s move as "xenophobic" and evidence of "anti- Romanian and anti-immigrant rhetoric" from leading politicians and sections of the media that was at odds with Europe's basic democratic principles. "The government is trying to hide its own problems by blaming everything on Romanians – that is the feeling not only among Romanians, but generally in Brussels as well," he said. Luhan said the UK's reputation...
NHS data obtained by the Guardian shows which nationalities contribute to the British healthcare system Mona Chalabi ...
attitudes harden Trainee doctor Felicia Buruiana first realised the newspaper headlines warning of a tide of Romanian beggars and benefits cheats were starting to intrude on her day-to-day life when patients began taking a keen interest in her background. At first the 37-year-old got "funny looks" when she told them she was Romanian because she "didn't look like a gypsy". Then, as the political and...
demands, the prime minister's official spokesman said: "We will look closely at the amendments that have been tabled." Downing Street has dispatched John Hayes, its ambassador to the Tory right, to try to reach agreement with Mills and other rebels as ministers prepare for the report stage of the immigration bill. The bill had been held up after Sir George Young, the chief whip, told No 10 that it...
s UK ambassador. So he and a Romanian journalist, Alina Matis - the foreign affairs editor of a leading title, Gndul - have carried out what he calls "a full deconstruction" of the Mail's original story. It can be found here . It is compelling stuff. But will his PCC complaint be dealt with? The commission does not usually take up third-party complaints. Update 2.30pm: I understand that the PCC have...
We follow the lives of two Syrian refugee families as they encounter people-smugglers, border guards and shocking conditions on their journey into Europe John Domokos Alex Rees Mustafa Khalili ...
Weddings in Ribnovo, southern Bulgaria, only take place during the winter and the traditional white mask worn by the bride goes back centuries ...
The Christian holiday of Epiphany marks the visit of the three kings to the infant Jesus, according to the western church. To the eastern Orthodox church, it marks the baptism of Christ. No matter the meaning, both branches of Christianity celebrate the day with gusto ...
Priests mark feast by casting crucifixes into water, and those who retrieve them are believed to be freed from evil spirits Thousands of young men have been plunging into icy rivers and lakes across Bulgaria to retrieve crucifixes cast by priests in an old ritual marking the feast of Epiphany. By tradition, a crucifix is cast into the waters of a lake or river, and it is believed that the person who...
standing, I nevertheless find it difficult to know what angle to take on this week's much anticipated mass influx of Romanians . I am filing this column, in English, on the morning of Thursday 2 January, but by the time you read it, on Sunday the 5th, it may already be appearing only in Romanian, in an attempt to court some of the 29 million potential new Observer readers the soft right predict will...
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 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...