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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/05/uk-bulgarian-romanian-immigration-shame
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| The UK's approach to Bulgarian and Romanian immigration makes me sick with shame | The UK's approach to Bulgarian and Romanian immigration makes me sick with shame |
| (2 months later) | |
| What a mean, tight-wad, mendacious, xenophobic and bad-mannered government we have. I'm rather embarrassed by it, especially as Daughter has Romanian chums and I have a Bulgarian friend. All right, only one, but I miss her. | What a mean, tight-wad, mendacious, xenophobic and bad-mannered government we have. I'm rather embarrassed by it, especially as Daughter has Romanian chums and I have a Bulgarian friend. All right, only one, but I miss her. |
| She lived here for a few years, worked as a farm labourer and cleaner full-time (the only jobs allowed), kept accounts, paid tax, learned to speak English fluently, went to university in the evenings, paid for her studies herself, passed a BSc and MSc with distinction, all the time sending money home to support her mother and grandmother, who could not have managed without it, and then she went home again. | She lived here for a few years, worked as a farm labourer and cleaner full-time (the only jobs allowed), kept accounts, paid tax, learned to speak English fluently, went to university in the evenings, paid for her studies herself, passed a BSc and MSc with distinction, all the time sending money home to support her mother and grandmother, who could not have managed without it, and then she went home again. |
| She was clever, charming and scrupulously honest. And here is our government trying to whip us all up into a frenzy of fear that the coming Romanian and Bulgarian hordes are raggedy, ill-educated, parasitic benefit tourists. I feel sick with shame. | She was clever, charming and scrupulously honest. And here is our government trying to whip us all up into a frenzy of fear that the coming Romanian and Bulgarian hordes are raggedy, ill-educated, parasitic benefit tourists. I feel sick with shame. |
| I am probably biased, being a second-generation eastern-European immigrant and Jewish, but the outrage and protests of the Bulgarian people prevented deportation of the Jews to Nazi concentration and death camps during the second world war, so I am not keen on having them now bad-mouthed by our leaders. | I am probably biased, being a second-generation eastern-European immigrant and Jewish, but the outrage and protests of the Bulgarian people prevented deportation of the Jews to Nazi concentration and death camps during the second world war, so I am not keen on having them now bad-mouthed by our leaders. |
| I know that David Cameron is longing to out-Ukip Ukip, and keeping foreigners out is a vote-winner, once you have convinced everyone that they are burdensome and almost subhuman, but there is really no need to go so far. We're not full up. We are not having to sit along the shoreline with our legs poking into the sea. Anyway, this is not the favourite European destination for Bulgarians, and Romania wants its workers back. | I know that David Cameron is longing to out-Ukip Ukip, and keeping foreigners out is a vote-winner, once you have convinced everyone that they are burdensome and almost subhuman, but there is really no need to go so far. We're not full up. We are not having to sit along the shoreline with our legs poking into the sea. Anyway, this is not the favourite European destination for Bulgarians, and Romania wants its workers back. |
| As for all this bollocks about foreigners taking our jobs and homes, all we need are rent-controls and a living minimum wage for everyone and no undercutting would be possible. | As for all this bollocks about foreigners taking our jobs and homes, all we need are rent-controls and a living minimum wage for everyone and no undercutting would be possible. |
| Instead of spying on the workers, why not start with a good spy on the construction industry, the top echelons of which are stuffed with greedy, corrupt crooks? | Instead of spying on the workers, why not start with a good spy on the construction industry, the top echelons of which are stuffed with greedy, corrupt crooks? |
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