The post you are reporting:
And this is the current state of our immigration Brian - kind permission of the Telegraph:
"More than 600,000 unemployed European Union migrants are living in Britain at a cost of £1.5 billion to the NHS alone, according to an EU report.
The authoritative study, obtained by The Sunday Telegraph, shows the number of jobless European migrants coming to Britain has risen dramatically in the past five years, intensifying demands for the Government to renegotiate EU membership.
Opponents of the EU seized on the figures to suggest Britain could not afford to allow European migrants to come here at will while continuing to provide a universal benefits system.
The 291-page report, to be published this week by the European commissioner in charge of employment and welfare, discloses:
• The number of "non-active" EU migrants in Britain has risen by 42 per cent between 2006 and 2012;
• 611,779 "non-active" EU migrants were living in Britain last year, up from 431,687 just six years ago. The total is equivalent to the population of Glasgow;
• The number of EU migrants coming to Britain without a job increased by 73 per cent in the three years to 2011;
• The current annual cost to the NHS of "non-active" EU migrants is estimated at £1.5 billion (€1.8 billion);
• In contrast, the estimated cost to France's health system of "non-active" EU migrants is a fraction of that to the NHS, at just £3.4 million.
The report was written for Brussels and ordered by Laszlo Andor, the socialist commissioner in charge of employment and social inclusion.
The Sunday Telegraph can disclose that he is to bring a court case to make it easier for European migrants to claim benefits in Britain. He will challenge a scheme that makes certain benefits available only to migrants from the EU who are "economically active" and is intended to make Britain less attractive to so-called benefit tourists.
But the EU-sponsored legal case would overturn this scheme, a move the Department for Work and Pensions said would make Britain more attractive to people wanting to live off the state.
Meanwhile, a court case last week detailed how a gang of Czech benefit fraudsters stood to make £1 million in bogus claims for child tax credits and child benefit, emphasising that benefit tourism can also include fraud on a vast scale.
Eurosceptic MPs said last night that the study and court case showed that Britain had to tighten up its borders and introduce stronger controls on welfare handouts.
The Government currently has no idea how much of Britain's welfare budget, including unemployment benefits, is given to EU citizens because a claimant's nationality is not recorded in the system.
Douglas Carswell, the Conservative backbench Euro-sceptic MP, said yesterday: "It is extraordinary how the European project has debased and debauched the original, noble idea of the welfare state.
"These figures show that the wave of benefit migrants has become a tsunami of economic refugees fleeing the eurozone crisis to try to find jobs here.
"We cannot both continue the free-at-the-point-of-use welfare state and benefits system and allow Europeans to flee the eurozone and come here.
"It is decision time. I would rather we quit Europe and had our own system of social protection."
Roger
