London, Dublin to curb migration

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LONDON -- Britain and Ireland, both already hit by tides of hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from eight former communist countries who joined the European Union two years ago, yesterday announced restrictions aimed at stemming a similar influx when Bulgaria and Romania become members of the European Union in January.

In a written statement to Parliament, Home Secretary John Reid said the only unskilled laborers to be allowed into Britain initially from the two new EU countries would be in agricultural and food-processing industries.

The controls will be reviewed annually.

Officials in Ireland said Bulgarian and Romanian workers would be barred from open access to Irish labor markets for at least two years.

Britain and Ireland, unlike most of the rest of the European Union, offered unfettered access to workers from the new members who joined the European Union's intake in 2004 -- and then could only watch as their official expectations of the numbers turned out to be wildly underestimated.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government confidently predicted about 13,000 migrant workers would land here each year.

Instead, some 600,000 immigrants arrived by early this year -- an unexpected influx that Mr. Reid said had helped trigger overcrowding in housing and put pressure on the nation's health service and its schools.

The Republic of Ireland had expected some 10,000 migrants from the Eastern European countries admitted to the European Union in 2004. What the small but thriving nation of 4.2 million citizens has taken in since then is a flood of some 200,000 immigrants, mainly Poles.

Both London and Dublin have come under heavy political demands that they not permit such an unrestricted flow of workers to occur again.

"Over the years," Mr. Reid said in his statement to Parliament, "Europe has prospered by letting people move and trade freely."