By Kitty Donaldson and Mark Deen
Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K. government, under mounting pressure to end an open-door policy that has made Britain a magnet for eastern Europeans, said it will extend restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian economic migrants for another year.
``Today, the right balance points to continuing to restrict access to the labor market for those low-skilled migrants coming from Romania and Bulgaria until at least the end of 2008,'' Home Office Minister Liam Byrne said in a statement to Parliament today. ``This is a prudent decision and will allow us to manage numbers entering the U.K.''
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is fighting opposition criticism that his government has lost control over immigration after it disclosed yesterday that there are 300,000 more foreign nationals working in the U.K. than it originally estimated. Conservative leader David Cameron promised a significant cut in the level of migration if his party wins power.
The U.K. can place immigration restrictions on Bulgaria and Romania for up to seven years, after the two Black Sea states joined the 27-nation European Union on Jan. 1.
The decision to keep restrictions comes amid mounting public concern about the pace of immigration, which has leapt since Britain and Ireland, eager to fill labor shortages, opened their doors to the 10 mainly eastern European nations that joined the EU in 2004.
Too Late
``This is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted,'' Chris Grayling, Work and Pensions spokesman for the Conservatives, said in an interview. ``What the government did not do was to put in place the right controls when Poland and most of the rest of the eastern European countries joined the European Union.''
In the first six months of 2007, 23,675 Bulgarians and Romanians were awarded work permits, according to Home Office figures. They are among the 700,000 eastern Europeans, mainly Poles, who have arrived since the EU expanded its borders three years ago.
Unions criticized the decision to extend curbs, saying Romanians and Bulgarians who want to work here will circumvent the restrictions.
``The truth is that any EU citizen is free to come to the U.K. and work as long as they are self-employed,'' Trades union Congress General Secretary Brendan Barber said in a statement. ``The main effect of the restrictions therefore is to force many Romanians and Bulgarians into bogus self-employment where they are more likely to face exploitation.''
`Already Here'
The Institute for Public Policy Research agreed. ``Romanian and Bulgarian workers are already here in Britain,'' said Danny Sriskandarajah, head of migration policy at the London-based institute. A more ``sensible approach'' would be to allow them to work legally and to pay taxes.
The Bulgarian government said the impact of the restriction would be minimal because its citizens would rather find jobs elsewhere.
``Britain is not the most-favored work destination,'' Nikolai Nikolov, an official at the Labor Ministry in Sofia, said in an interview. The U.S., Canada, Spain and Germany are preferred, he said.
Immigration topped the list of U.K. voter concerns this month, with 41 percent saying it is the most important issue facing Britain, up from 25 percent in January, according to a monthly survey by Ipsos Mori Ltd. The poll interviewed 1,004 adults Oct. 18-23.
Underestimate
Pressure on the government intensified today after Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain acknowledged that 1.1 million foreign nationals have found work in the U.K. since 1997 rather than the 800,000 originally estimated.
The Conservatives later released a letter dated July 18 written by Karen Dunnell, head of the Office for National Statistics, to Grayling. In it, she states that 1.5 million foreign-born people who had entered the U.K. since 1997 were in work, including those who were children when they arrived. The estimate is based on the U.K. Labour Force Survey.
The government has defended the increase by saying that immigrants add more to the economy than they claim in services, an argument backed by British business leaders for whom migrant labor has helped hold down costs.
Byrne said the curbs are designed to restrict the inflow of low-skilled migrants, and reaffirmed plans to introduce an Australian points-based system in 2008 that uses job and language qualifications for assessing whether migrants should be accepted.
``If we need low-skilled workers they should be coming from the U.K. first and Europe second,'' Byrne told reporters in London today.
The Office for National Statistics forecast this month that the U.K. population will reach 71 million by 2031 from 60.6 million currently, with almost half of the gain stemming from migration.
The government said last month it expects to receive 190,000 foreign workers a year over the ``long term,'' a third more than it predicted three years ago. It raised its estimate after the pace of eastern European immigration since 2004 dwarfed the 13,000 officials had forecast.
To contact the reporter on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net . Mark Deen in London at markdeen@bloomberg.net
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