UK Extends Employment Restrictions for Bulgarian and Romanian Nationals

According to an announcement released by UK Immigration Minister Damian Green on November 23, 2011, Romanian and Bulgarian nationals seeking to work in the UK will continue to be required to obtain permission from the UK Border Agency until the end of 2013.

Minister Damian Green indicated that the extension of employment restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian nationals aims to make sure "migration benefits the UK and does not adversely impact on the labour market".

"The government is radically reforming the immigration system, and has already announced an annual limit on work visas and tough new rules for students to ensure net migration is reduced from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands." he said.

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The Netherlands: Immigrants tangled up with Turkish gangs

Are Bulgarian immigrants abusing the welfare system? Several cases of benefit fraud have sparked controversy. But often, the suspected fraudsters are themselves simply victims of organised crime networks. 

Turks in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Bulgaria play a major role in organising fraudulent benefit claims in the Netherlands. Not to mention the exploitation of illiterate Bulgarians. Bulgaria has quite a large Turkish-speaking minority. It comprises ethnic Turks and Roma, who began calling themselves Turkish after 1989. Their shared language and religion enable them to easily befriend the large Turkish communities in western Europe. Mitko received €200, but never saw any sign of the promised phone.

A few weeks later, however, his old phone began to ring incessantly. It was invariably a Dutchman on the line, who he could not understand. After a while, he realised that it had to be a man from the bank. Mitko thinks that it is the Dutch bank with an orange lion in its logo, because he once saw the symbol on a bank card.

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