James Elles` opinion about migration
During our visit to Strasbourg we had an opportunity to meet two members of the EP - James Elles from the U.K. and Valdis Dombrovskis from Latvia - and to interview them. Among others the question about migration was asked.
As V. Dombrovskis said, in Latvia emigration is an important problem and most Latvian emigrants go to Ireland and England. It was interesting to hear an opinion from another side shared by English MEP James Elles.
Of course, England is not interested in increasing the number of immigrants. About half a million people have already come to England. The population is changing as different nationalities come to one place and, in Mr. Elles`s opinion, it effects traditions and culture as a whole. As Mr. Elles said, one of the new features is that the catholic church is getting stronger than the anglican church. However, there are positive points in migration, too. J. Elles believes that migration has helped England's economy, helped getting workers into the jobs local people didn't want to do or were not qualified for.
In 2004 the British goverment decided not to have any transitional arrangements on migration from certain Eastern European countries. Mr. Elles thinks that the issue of freedom of travelling and work is important.
Trying to sum up, I got an impression that England was actually INTERESTED in immigration. However, J. Elles hopes that people will not stay for ever in the new country, but our statistics show that the majority of the Latvians who emigrated do NOT come back. Again, his offered solution was time as the best thing we can do is to wait... Is it really so?
All in all, it was interesting to visit the EP, to listen to Mr. Elles and to Mr. Dombrovskis and to view the problem from a different angle.
