BULGARIA, 'BRITAIN'S BACK DOOR' FOR EAST EUROPE

More than 1,000 Moldovans, Ukrainians and Russians every month are applying for Bulgarian nationality - prompting claims that many are then heading straight to Britain.

The news comes after figures showed that the numbers of Bulgarians and Romanians visiting Britain rose by 77 per cent in 12 months.

They are allowed to visit as many times as they want after their countries joined the European Union in January last year.

The number who can work here is strictly limited by quotas but the big rise in visitors fuelled suspicions that many were choosing to stay in Britain and work in the black economy.

Boyko Rashkov, Bulgaria's deputy justice minister, said more than 250 applications for Bulgarian citizenship were being processed by the Ministry of Justice in Sofia each week. Once they have been granted citizenship they are free to move around all 27 European Union states.

Many of the applicants, who declare that they are of Bulgarian origin, are from Moldova, Ukraine, Macedonia and Russia. There are also a large number of people from Asian countries applying for Bulgarian citizenship.

According to the state news agency, the applicants tell officials that they wish to move to Bulgaria with their families, and to start a business.

Mr Rashkov said he needed more staff to cope with a backlog of applications, which has jumped to 61,000.
"Our staff just cannot deal with all the work", he said.

Mr Rashkov said applicants who said they wanted Bulgarian citizenship in order to travel freely in the EU have been rejected.
MPs and campaigners expressed concerns about the influx.

James Clappison, a member of the Commons home affairs select committee, said: "We need to have clarity about how this affects the measures that the Government put into place to control Bulgarian and Romanians working in the UK."

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: "It is quite clear that these people seeking Bulgarian citizenship are doing so in order to obtain access to the European labour market.

"In many cases that market will be Britain since the controls imposed by the Government on Bulgarians and Romanians leak like a sieve."

Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that 200,000 people from Bulgaria and Romania visited Britain in the year to the end of July 2007, compared with 113,000 visitors in the previous 12 months.

The Government has limited the number of people from those countries who could work in Britain. Figures show that 15,000 "accession worker cards" were granted between January and June.

Ministers are forecasting that net immigration, taking account of large-scale emigration, will add 190,000 people a year to the population. By 2031, it is expected to be 71 million, up from 60.6 million in 2006.

The House of Lords reported last month that the economic benefits of increased migration to Britons had been negligible.