Word: britain
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...Since the European Union's enlargement in 2004, when Britain opened its job market to Europe's new member states, Poles have provided the British economy with a flood of cheap and plentiful labor. (Sweden and Ireland also opened their doors to East Europeans seeking work, while other E.U. countries delayed their legal arrival.) The immigration wave took Britain by surprise. While the government expected at most 13,000 East Europeans annually, nearly 800,000 applied for work permits between 2004 and the end of 2007. The stereotypical arrival was the Polish plumber, but thousands of professionals arrived too. Today...
...work permit rules, or France, which did the same earlier this summer (and where salaries are paid in the soaring euro). "They can't find work here, and they came to work, not to get job benefits," says Jan Mokrzycki, president of the Federation of Poles in Great Britain. Earlier this summer, the Polish daily Dziennik Zwiazkowy reported that job offers for Poles in the U.K. and Ireland were down a third on last year, and a recent report by the Institute for Public Policy Research estimated that about half of the million East Europeans who arrived since enlargement...
...With the Polish economy growing at over 6%, there's a steady campaign to lure foreign workers home. Polish newspapers in Britain run ads from companies in Poland looking for returnee workers; builders are particularly in demand as the country pours money into infrastructure for the 2012 European Football Championship. Polish employers have trekked out to London job fairs looking for labor, while the city of Wroclaw even mounted its own campaign, sending officials to Britain to encourage Poles to return...
...just Poland's growing opportunities that are causing the shift. After the country's E.U. accession, the Polish media painted Britain as a paradise. "The Poles all came here expecting gold coming from heaven," says Smolicz. For many, the reality has been less sublime. Earlier this summer, a Polish couple in the English city of Lincoln who'd had trouble finding steady work committed suicide, leaving behind an 11-year-old daughter. The U.K.-based Polish Times followed up with a cover story on poverty among Polish migrants. "People who work abroad are perceived in Poland as very rich...
...Britain, whose relations with Russia have been in a chill since the 2006 murder in London of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, also took a robust tone after Russia's invasion of Georgia, though it was David Cameron, the Conservative opposition leader, who raced to Tbilisi in mid-August to blast the Russians while Brown vacationed uncomfortably in Scotland. British Foreign Minister David Miliband took the baton and traveled to Ukraine, another country deeply worried about Moscow's expansionist ambitions. Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, inhabited mostly by ethnic Russians and home to the Russian Black Sea fleet...