UK Immigration News

The UK's prime minister David Cameron has ordered that the release of a government report commissioned by the Home Secretary Theresa May should be delayed until after the European elections in May 2014.

The Financial Times, a UK newspaper, reports that Mr Cameron believes that the report might be damaging to the Conservatives' chances in the election. The FT reports that some Whitehall insiders believe that it will never be published.

A senior Conservative cabinet minister has been 'rebuked' by the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron for saying that he did not accept 'that the European Union is responsible for unacceptable waves of migration' and adding that immigration had made the UK 'far more exciting and healthier'.

Kenneth Clarke, a veteran Conservative politician who served in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet in the 1980s, told The Financial Times that immigrants from the EU had made 'a positive contribution to our economy'.

The UK's top immigration expert Sir David Metcalf has told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee that UK employers are deliberately employing foreign-born workers in preference to UK workers to do low-skilled work such as vegetable picking or food retail because foreign-born candidates are likely to work harder, learn faster and be more highly motivated than their English counterparts.

Laszlo Andor, the EU's commissioner for social affairs and social inclusion, says that the debate on migration within the EU has become 'emotional and misguided'. He said that the press, particularly in Germany and the UK, had been printing 'myths' about immigration.

Mr Andor was speaking at the launch of new rules on the eligibility for social security benefits of EU citizens who have moved to other EU states. The European Commission hopes that these guidelines will clarify the law for member states.

The UK's opposition Labour Party has accused the Coalition government of failing to protect UK workers from the effects of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria. On 1st January 2014, transitional controls which barred workers from the two countries expired. Many commentators predicted a mass influx of workers from the two countries.

Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union in 2007. At that time, the UK, like most western European Union countries imposed controls on citizens of the new countries barring them from moving to live and work.

Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Union, has accused the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron of risking the future of the British people by using populist, anti-EU rhetoric to try to win votes.

During a 'web chat' streamed from Brussels on Thursday 9th January 2014, Ms Reding said that the Prime Minister is misleading the UK public by claiming that Britain is under siege from an army of European immigrants who will steal British jobs and/or live off British benefits. She said that the figures show that the UK has benefited from EU immigration.