The recession has sparked a sharp fall in the number of East European migrants coming to Britain to work, official figures showed last night.
The flow of Polish workers, for example, has fallen by 55% with approved applications from Poland declining from 36,000 to 16,000 last year.
The Office for National Statistics said overall that work applications from the eight countries which joined the EU in 2004 - such as Poland, Hungary and Latvia - fell to 29,000 in the last three months of 2008, compared to 53,000 in the same period in 2007.
For all of last year, applications for the Worker Registration Scheme - which EU nationals must register with if they want to work in the UK for more than a month - fell to 165,000 from 218,000 in 2007 and from 235,000 in 2006.
"The number of Eastern Europeans coming here to work is dramatically falling and research suggests that many of those that came have now gone home," said Phil Woolas, UK Immigration Minister, who noted the latest Accession Monitoring Report showed applications were at their lowest level since 2004.
Mr Woolas said the points-based system had proved its flexibility by the suspension of the low-skilled worker tier and UK Government plans to toughen up the existing resident labour market test for employers.
"This will ensure," insisted Mr Woolas, "that during these economic times, when people are losing jobs, people already here have the first crack of the whip at getting work."
At the weekend, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith signalled that the number of skilled workers allowed into the UK from outside the EU would be cut almost in half from next year.
Ms Smith is also considering making sure migrant workers are not able to take a skilled job unless it has been advertised to British workers first.
However, it has already been highlighted that Scotland's economic needs regarding migrants are very different from southern England.
Last month, Morag Alexander, the new Scottish Equality and Human Rights Commissioner, questioned whether Scotland might need its own system for immigration, warning that if it did not meet the challenges of a falling population, it could "become some kind of retirement home sitting on the edge of Europe".
On the issue of illegal immigration, Home Office figures showed last year 66,275 people with no legal right to stay in Britain were removed from the UK or left voluntarily. This was a rise of 5% on 2007.
Meantime, asylum applications, excluding dependants, were up 10% year on year from 23,430 to 25,670.
http://comments.theherald.co.uk/heraldtalk/2009/02/recession-sparks-fall-in-immigration.php
