By the time you see this, the elections might well be over and done with - but the question will still linger. Immigration. Romanians - or Romani, same difference. Bulgarians. What can be done to stem the inflow?
The UK Parliament's figures, as published in February on the official site, place immigration at whopping highs, having surpassed emigration year after year since 1998 by over 100,000 souls. How hungry are these souls and their attendant bellies anyway? Here's my two cents.
The Romani aren't getting a bad rap without rap sheets as long as my arm (and I'm pretty lanky).
Some of them put just as much pressure on the Romanian state back home, others have swindling tricks up their sleeve you wouldn't imagine, like the grubbiest swindlers in the most untenable of Hollywood movies! You can watch Nae Caranfil's 2002 eye-opening Philanthropy for more on that - or skip it and adapt to the naturally changing world around you. I'm not trying to poison the well here - just to say that every people has its bad apples and in this day and age there are plenty other options on hand than ousting everyone with a Romanian ID card. Police them (like they'd be policed in Romania if the beat cops weren't so afraid of the long reach of the mob clans that send them out on the streets to begin with) - but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Whose pot of gold is it anyway?
CNN has now joined the fray by publishing a slideshow on seven noteworthy foreigners who've put down roots here. Of the seven slides, two are notably devoted to Romanians, a barrister and an entrepreneur. The latter of them, founder and CEO of Brainient, Emi Gal, recently wrote in an otherwise self-effacing blog post (emigal.com - in Romanian) that his video platform "is a market leader in Britain," that "we've got the best product in all of Europe's interactive video advertising industry" and that "the biggest TV networks in Europe are using the tech built by a team of talented Romanians." How much do you suppose he's paying the British government in taxes alone?
Now, you've probably read this post here and maybe even given some thought to how the Romanians are making a killing riding on the British people's coattails. I wouldn't fault you for thinking that (Romanians are tech-savvier than most). But the truth of the matter is, there's no way around it, nor any conceivable road back to the "splendid isolation," not in our inter-connected world where everyone can emerge from the backwoods of Nowhere Land in pursuit of happiness and the European dream about equal chances for all.
Not when the EU's on a mission to enforce it because a united front makes sense, I guess, just in case the other barn-door-big geopolitical players get any bellicose ideas.
