Clueless on counts
No one knows how many Polish workers, let alone families, live in the UK and any estimate we come across in the media is bound to be wrong.
British statistics recognise that Poles are now the single largest group of foreign nationals in the country, but immigration figures are confusing, they vary widely and it has become almost impossible to understand where they come from.
National Insurance registration numbers provide an indicator of how many Poles legally work in the UK.
However, some statistical tools, such as border control surveys and the Worker Registration Scheme (see box on the right), are flawed because they only account for foreign nationals entering but not leaving the country. Another instrument, the Labour Force Survey, is based on population samples, but the sample size for foreign nationals is too small to produce reliable results.
The Central Statistical Office of Poland recorded over one million citizens leaving Poland for the UK for a minimum of two months between 2004 and 2006. See how this compares to other EU countries.
The most comprehensive report on post-EU enlargement migration so far was published in April by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). Read the report “Floodgate or turnstiles”.
The report does not suggest a precise number of Poles in the country, but British landlords might have an idea: 44 million pints of leading Polish beer brands Lech and Tyskie are sold annually in the UK. Before 2004, Polish beers were not widely available in Britain.
Worker Registration Scheme
The most quoted source of statistics is the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS). According to the Home Office, between May 2004 and the end of 2007, close to 480,000 Poles signed on to the scheme.
The WRS was set up in 2004 to keep track of work migration from the new EU member states.
Workers have to register on the scheme within a month of joining a new employer.
However, the WRS is not strictly enforced anymore and short-term and self-employed workers are not required to register.
When it comes to counting family members, the WRS proves largely useless.
According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), only seven per cent of workers who registered on the scheme between May 2004 and December 2007 declared they had dependants living with them in the UK.
Many migrants, however, arrive on their own initially, but are later joined by family members.