In an unprecedented event, the number of immigrants to the United Kingdom from the European Union are about to overtake the number of immigrants into the United Kingdom from outside the European Union. This is a first for the United Kingdom, and is an extremely worrying trend, considering that the United Kingdom has no power to stop the influx of these people into the country. The numbers are really staggering. The five hundred and twenty thousand European Union immigrants entering the United Kingdom every four years will be equivalent to the entire population of Manchester. This poses a huge number of problems to the United Kingdom. They need to work extremely hard to provide for these immigrants. Under the European Union agreement, these individual are essentially equal to United Kingdom citizens and must be afforded all the services at parity with the natives. This applies for the other European Union countries too, including Romania and Bulgaria which are the primary source of the immigrants. While this sounds very nice in theory, it is a joke in reality.

While the United Kingdom has advanced health care and social services, Bulgaria and Romania are relatively very, very, very under – developed and are nowhere close to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has spent a lot of money, time and effort on these sectors to develop them and bring them up to their modern levels and it is extremely unfair that citizens of another country enjoy these benefits for free. What is even more infuriating is that all these services are ultimately paid for by taxes collected from the citizens. While Romanian and Bulgarian citizens earning in the United Kingdom will also have to pay taxes, they did not contribute to the development of the services or their upkeep and hence, many are of the school of thought that they should be denied these services.

Currently, due to the extremely low standard of living in Romania and Bulgaria, many citizens choose to migrate to the United Kingdom so as to enjoy all the benefits that the United Kingdom can provide them. All this is done, of course, at the tax payer’s expense. Another major issue that this mass influx of Romanians and Bulgarians has created is a shortage of blue collar jobs. Many workers from these countries are willing to work at ridiculously low rates. Despite earning a very little sum of money, they are able to live very well since they are accustomed to an extremely low standard of living. For them, even a minimum wage job is very well paying. This naturally creates a lot of resentment amongst native United Kingdom citizens who can’t compete. The reason for this is that they simply cannot afford to work for the ridiculously low rates that Romanians and Bulgarians will work without taking a considerable hit in their standard of life. The issue of European Union immigrants needs to be addressed, and fast. It is bound to cause a crisis if this does not occur.