Impoverished Gypsies planning mass exodus to England as EU expands?
 

As an ethnic Roma, Baco says he has no chance of a good life in Slovakia, where negative stereotypes that brand Gypsies as thieving bums have poisoned the country's psyche against an estimated half a million of its citizens like him.

So the 36-year-old father of four plans to get out.

"I'm going to England in May when we join the (European) Union," he said from the cluster of tumbledown shacks where he lives in central Slovakia, 230 miles from Bratislava.

Under the current system, an immigrant in Britain can get unemployment, housing and other benefits such as free health care and schools for children if he proves he is at least looking for work and has come to England for good reasons.

Roma leaders say the Czech and Slovak governments are doing too little to remedy the desperate living conditions for the estimated 700,000 to 800,000 Roma in their countries. This may prompt thousands to move west.

Unemployment is nearly 100 percent in many settlements across the region, and state supported incomes are low. In Slovakia, for example, a family of four on welfare gets around $125 monthly, not nearly enough for someone to save for the several months in England that are now necessary for benefits to kick in.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ration_roma_dc

Anyone in England have an opinion on this?

I wonder why they dont want to live with ze Germans

you are going to have a hard time finding someone in the UK that doesn't think that has already started. I should go take a photo from off my balcony..there is a gypsy camp set up right across the street. They are more established than the new influx but gypsies are nothing new.

According to this article there are close to a million more that may be waiting until May when the new EU countries are added. Can the British economy handle another million poor immigrants looking for work and free health care and other services?

um, it is so hard to have this conversation without it inviting the racists in because the whole assylum issue is so huge here at the moment that it has been used to back an upsurge in membership to the British National Party (BNP).

Also, as an immigrant myself I always feel like I come down very easily on the side of assylum cases. However, I do see why people get worked up because there is a problem with bogus assylum seakers and in particular people looking for economic assylum.

The rules are suppose to be that they stop in the first safe country. The UK is an island so obviously they have to go through other countries to get here. However, that leads to a lot of people in the UK thinking that none of the other countries in the EU take part of the load when that isn't the whole truth.

Germany takes a good portion for example but places like France have been all too happy to turn a blind eye as people hide in trucks, or try to hitch a ride underneat a Eurostar train into the UK.


seriously...I live on the edge of the city and I often go out to the shops or something and find that the people from the Gypsy camp across the street are letting horses graze on the lawn of my apartment block.

doubtful. they are struggling with the status quo already.

OTOH i found it fascinating how they handle health care. last year when on holiday there i felt a nasty pain in my abdominal area, went to the doc, who sent me straight to hospital. they kept me over night, did scans, blood tests, x-ray, the full works. i was pain free next day and was sent home with drugs for 3 days and the advice to be back ASAP if the pain returns. and all they wanted to know was my name and home address, not even asking for persona ldocuments to prove my data was right.

fascinated me. all that costs i must have caused, and they did not take my international health check to have my insurance pay for it.

that system needs an overhaul.

I saw a Documentary on Gypsies last night, did not know they are from India. Pretty interesting

to me that is the exact beauty of the system...you were treated and didn't have to worry about paying out for it. Yes, you aren't paying taxes but I belive that is because of an agreement within the EU that British citizens should be treated the same way if they are in an EU country.

UK already has thousands of immigrants flocking in every day, with my taxes paying for them to live without working.not meaning to sound racist but it is a serious problem. I am leaving as soon as possible

yeah but where are you going to move that doesn't have an immigration problem? Not many of them around these days.

Iraq

Ive been saying to all my pals, in May go down to Dover and check out the boat loads of Eastern Europeans trying to get into the UK with EU passports. The UK is already a mess now this lot will be filling the streets and handing out begging notes written in English "SHEEEESH"

Thats why I moved to the Isle of Man

:eatmouse

its cause most of these gypsies ARE thieves and bums! they have made no effort to integrate into the european societies ever since they came there. slovakian, romanian and many other eastern european governments would build thousands of houses and provide them for free for these lowlifes. and what would they do? they'd sell them off and go back to living in their wagons.

woe to britain if they come there!

rabbit

I had a conversation with someone who is going to get Pakistanis to become Bularian citizens, in effect inmport them into BUlgaria, let them sit there for 3 years and when Bulgaria becomes and EU state in 2007 they can then get to the UK.


Yeah right


They are gonna have to change the rules me thinks

The NHS is a great system, but it's getting to the point in the UK now where there are so many people coming into the UK for the free healthcare that many British citizens are heading overseas and paying for major medical treatment themselves, rather than join a 2 year waiting list to get treatment in the UK...

again, they ARE here...right across the road from my house and they do live in wagons still. Some don't obviously but it is still fairly common. I'm going out to get food in a moment I might take a pic. Our gypsy camp is fairly established so they have made sort of homes but they don't own that land - they just camped up on it one day and 10+ years later they are still there. Once a year the police flush their drains for drugs which is always entertaining to watch.

The NHS in the UK sucks and we pay for it in contributions, his new lot will fuck the whole system up.


GRRRRRRRR