Taxpayers foot bill for migrants to go home
COUNCILS are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money sending homeless eastern European immigrants back to their own countries, it emerged yesterday.
The councils and charities have received Government grants to fund one-way bus and air tickets.
London’s Westminster City Council alone received £100,000 last year for costs including coach tickets and extra police and interpreters.
Now a charity is getting money from the Communities and Local Government Department - initially of £60,000 - specifically to help homeless eastern Europeans in London who want to leave the UK.
As well as providing fares home, Thames Reach will fly in workers with Polish and other languages to help its work and will contact authorities in people’s home countries to arrange support including work, training, housing and healthcare when they get back.
Up to a fifth of London’s estimated 3,000-a-year [correct] rough sleepers are from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The problem is concentrated in London and has grown since 2004 when eight eastern and central European countries of the old Soviet bloc joined the European Union.
Hundreds of thousands of their citizens came to the UK when Britain said they could work as well as enjoy the right to travel around Europe which comes with EU membership. While the vast majority find work, a minority end up sleeping rough because they have not found jobs.
The latest developments underline the strains put on Britain by Labour’s failure to control immigration.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, commented: “In the interests of the British people and the wellbeing of migrants themselves, the Government should look at requiring proof that people are able to support themselves if they are coming here without a job offer.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationwatchUK, backed funding for destitute migrants to go home but said their countries’ authorities must not be let off the hook.
Sir Andrew said: “One free ticket home, but only one, would be both humane for the migrant worker and sensible for the British taxpayer.
“But we must not take over from the consulates of Poland and the other eastern European countries their responsibilities for their own citizens.”
A spokesman for Thames Reach said the cost of returning homeless immigrants to their own countries was small compared to the “huge gain” which the UK economy made in taxes from the vast majority of Eastern European immigrants.
“We’re talking about support for some of the most vulnerable people in society. They are in a difficult and quite dangerous situation. Especially at this time of year when it is so cold, it’s a life and death matter,” he said.
Councillor Philippa Roe, of Westminster City Council, said the council had a duty to assist vulnerable people. “We are lobbying the embassies to provide more support for their own nationals while they are in the UK and when they return home.”
