Daily Express

IN NO area of public policy does membership of the European Union limit our country's right to pursue its national interest more than in the matter of immigration.

All mainstream political parties now admit that immigration throughout the early years of this century has been too high.

Much too high.

Few people any longer bother to deny that the huge volume of immigration, especially from the so-called A8 new EU member states, has placed enormous strains on society.

Youth unemployment began its long climb to nearly a million when the floodgates were opened to incomers from Poland, Lithuania and the rest.

At the time official Whitehall estimates suggested that only a few thousand would come.

This newspaper warned that hundreds of thousands would. And this newspaper was right.

In fact more than a million eastern Europeans are thought to have moved here since immigration controls were lifted in 2004.

Back then Labour did not even implement the transitional controls allowed under EU law. That was a reckless and unforgivable decision.

Inevitably the vast migrant inflow put great pressure on many aspects of life from housing to school places, hospitals, welfare and community cohesion.

Yet instead of learning its lesson the political class proposes to make the same mistake all over again.

Once more the interests of the British people are to be sacrificed on the altar of EU rules.

This time it is 28 million Romanians and Bulgarians who are to get full access to our jobs market.

That is despite Britain only now emerging from a five-year economic depression and with youth unemployment remaining intolerably high.

It is very hard to believe that David Cameron would be so foolish as to throw open our borders voluntarily to all-comers from two sizeable and impoverished European nations.

He is only doing it because EU rules say he has to.

Yet the Prime Minister must know that what he is proposing is against the interests of the British people.

In effect he is asking his own country to “take one for the team”. But that team is one most of us would rather not play for at all: the EU.

In fact there are grounds for thinking that the Romania/Bulgaria experiment could go even more wrong than the A8 one.

For a start we are more full than we were back then.

And immigration from southern European countries such as Spain and Greece has already increased sharply as a wave of so-called “eurozone refugees” has headed our way.

*The Daily Express further announces that their recent "crusade" to prevent a new surge of European immigration to Britain has already won massive support as thousands have signed their petition calling on the Government to keep controls on Bulgarian and Romanian workers coming there.

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