Returning Polish migrants claims are inaccurate

A Polish immigration expert has rubbished the UK Government’s claims that record numbers of Polish migrant workers are returning home.

The government has gone to great lengths to highlight the improvements made in minimising the number of Eastern European workers being allowed to remain in Britain, using numbers of returning foreign nationals to trumpet claims that their contentious immigration policy is a success – something made all the more important in election year. According to the Office for National Statistics around 50 percent of migrant workers who have arrived from Eastern Europe since the watershed year of 2004 have returned home, a figure estimated to be three-quarters of a million people. These statistics have been highlighted by Labour ministers as clear evidence that most foreign workers live for only a short period of time in the UK.

However, Professor Krustyna Iglicka, a Polish immigration expert has questioned the figures, arguing that not only are they misleading but that the exact opposite is more likely. Speaking from Poland Iglicka said that there was scant evidence on the streets of that country to suggest large numbers of migrant workers had returned. Indeed, just 22,000 Poles returned home in 2008 according to government records. Iglicka believes that there are still around one million Poles in the UK.

Phil Woolas, the Immigration Minister, has claimed that a mere 700,000 foreign workers now remain in the UK. His statement has been based on a 2009 study which suggested that the recession would force some one million migrants home, saying that the report demonstrated that migrant workers only visited the UK for a short period of time before returning home. He did also acknowledge that measuring such information was not an exact science.