Immigration

Somehow I don’t think that the average young man or woman sat outside a cafe in sunny Sofia or Bucharest is considering taking out a passport in order to come and live in a cold, wet and windswept town in the west of County Durham, which hasn’t seen good economic times for over 100 years.

The sad reality is that most young people with qualifications and ambition want to leave places like Crook and other towns in this area rather than the other way around.

Take my own family for instance. We have blood relations who have emigrated to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the US and continental Europe.

In other words, a significant proportion of my family are immigrants to other countries.

Every one of them has done well for themselves. They have worked hard, just like Polish, Indian and other migrants do in this country.

Besides with a name like Phillips, I would suggest if ancestry is traced back far enough then it is likely that there will be a Welsh speaking immigrant, whose dress, religion and culture were very different to the people of England at the time.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.

TRY as he may, George Osborne will never get the economy on track while Eastern European visitors fill the private sector jobs as fast as he creates them.

Citizens of EU countries are entitled to seek work and domicile in this country because of agreements signed by previous UK governments.

For instance, in 2004, New Labour agreed the Nice Treaty and predicted that 13,000 people would arrive. In the event, more than one million were known to arrive, with the actual number never being acknowledged.

Britain was totally unprepared for the massive influx which threatened to swamp housing, public services, education, health, and our economy in general.

So we coped, but we will be paying the costs of this debacle for generations to come?

January 1, 2014, 29 million people from Rumania and Bulgaria will be eligible to enter the UK and assume the same rights as a UK citizen.

These countries have longstanding unemployment, social problems, and crime issues – which is why we claimed the seven year moratorium on movement when they joined the EU in 2007. Since then, the situation has deteriorated not improved.

Mindful of New Labour’s 2004 debacle, surely David Cameron must not be allowed to repeat the fiasco. He must put the interests of our failing economy and our two million unemployed before any obligations he may feel for an ill-conceived treaty agreed many years ago in wildly different circumstances to those which exist today.

D Gillon, Sunderland.

I HAVE read numerous articles regarding the predicted tidal wave of Romanian immigrants about to swamp our shores and take all our benefits.

Well, if any of them do manage to get anything from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), then could they please let me know how, because I have had nothing but hassle in trying to claim anything.

My money was stopped in November and I was told to reapply.

I handed my forms to my local job centre, which misplaced them. I filled in some more forms which got lost in the Christmas post.

In January, I again filled in the same forms and eventually got some benefit, but my money was stopped after two payments and I was told to re-apply for a different benefit. So I did.

I was then informed that I did not qualify for this benefit but should apply for a different benefit. This I did, but I had to go all of February with no money.

My money was re-instated but I now have to appear before the DWP in April and I have been informed that my money will again be stopped.

It is said that job centres have secret targets to remove benefits from claimants, although DWP Secretary Iain Duncan Smith denies this. Well, I can inform him that either these targets exist or there is sheer incompetence among his staff.

Having previously always worked, I find my treatment by the DWP disgraceful.

Name supplied, south Durham.