LONDON - The British Government may yet be forced by politics to limit migration from the countries of eastern Europe now poised to join the European Union although both Britain and British industry have long welcomed immigrants.

Britain, unlike most other European Union countries, is in the fortunate position of having a record low level of unemployment, record high employment and plenty of jobs are still available.

In fact, industry regularly complains that there are not enough skilled workers in Britain and has urged the government to issue more work permits to migrants with the required skills.

"Business should welcome workers from the 'accession countries' coming to the UK if they can help us to address the economy's skills shortages," said David Frost, head of the British Chamber of Commerce, referring to the 10 nations joining the EU on May 1.

Unusually, he was echoed by the Trades Union Congress chief Brendan Barber last Monday who added: "The free movement of goods, capital and services within the EU should be matched by freedom for European workers to take jobs anywhere in the EU."

The government, keen to expand the economy's growth rate and keep the lid on wage inflation, has happily obliged, dramatically increasing the number of work permits it has issued to 129,000 in 2002 - a fourfold rise in just eight years.

And it has had a "open door" policy that the principle of the free movement of labour within the EU should apply to the new countries as well as existing members.

However, Home Secretary David Blunkett this week announced restrictions on migrants' ability to claim social security benefits in Britain to ensure they work rather than shirk.

Other EU members, facing unemployment that is often double UK levels, have announced restrictions on the freedom of movement for people from the accession countries for up to seven years.

Scare stories

But was Blunkett over-reacting to scare stories about hordes of people invading Britain? The figures, at first glance, look large. Around 75 million live in the accession countries. The EU estimates that about 370,000 of those could migrate westwards in search of work. That could mean about 17,000 coming to Britain.

The Home Office reckons that 5,000 to 13,000 inhabitants of the "new Europe" countries could head to Britain each year, although some estimates are much larger, and all are highly uncertain.

But, to put these figures into perspective, the number of people in work in Britain is now over 28 million, an all-time high and a number which has grown by nearly half a million in the past two years.

Similarly, unemployment has fallen rapidly in recent years due to a strong and stable economy and now stands at around 5 per cent, just over half of the EU average. With jobs still plentiful, it is small wonder that Britain is a magnet.

But it is also clear that the economy has comfortably absorbed lots of new migrants in all sorts of areas including healthcare, computing, education and building trades without any noticeable impact on Britons' ability to find work.

Growth boost

The government estimates that net immigration will amount to 130,000 a year in the coming years, or only half of 1 per cent of the current workforce, and certainly not the "floods" talked about in Britain's tabloid newspapers.

"Net migration into the UK will be relatively small compared to the size of the UK labour market and the scale of flows will reduce over time," said left-leaning thinktank the Institute of Public Policy Research in a factfile released this week.

Still, migrant workers tend to be young, motivated and educated and so help boost economic growth. Research also suggests that many stay for a time to save some money before returning to their home country and so are not a burden on the country when they retire.

"I have never had so much work as I am getting here," said one Polish building worker, Derek. "But we all come to work like hell for a few years and then take our money home to Poland," he said.

He also said getting a work permit a year ago had been easy and thought the Poles who wanted to come to Britain were already here. "You just fill out a form listing your skills and you get the permit. Joining the EU will not make much difference to us."

(Agencies via Xinhua)