http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/10/20/news/poles.php

Europe's Great Migration

Europe's great migration
By Thomas Fuller International Herald Tribune

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2005


LONDON It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a
half after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans
have washed into Britain.

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average
rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to allow unlimited
access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the
EU last year.

They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders,
and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic
enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and
Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.

But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these
workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and
economic growth continues apace.

Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in
Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be
one of the great migrations of recent decades.

Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields
like nursing and construction.

"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly skilled,
highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a diplomat at the
British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with the way it's progressed
over the first 16 months, and we're confident it will be a beneficial
relationship for both sides in the future."

Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland and Sweden,
the only other West European countries that opened their labor markets to
the new EU members.

With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still needs workers,
and immigration is actively encouraged. More than 128,000 East Europeans
from the new EU member states registered to work in Ireland from May 2004 to
August this year.

Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom come
from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish; last
summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin to Warsaw.

The phenomenon is more subdued in Sweden, where about 16,000 workers from
the new EU countries registered with the authorities between May 2004 and
early October this year. A substantial majority, about two thirds, were
Poles, followed by Lithuanians and Estonians.

Fearing a massive influx of East Europeans after enlargement, other West
European countries threw up barriers that will be lowered only gradually
over the next decade. A Pole seeking to work in France, for example, still
needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such permits to Poles in
the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number of Poles who arrive in
Britain every two days.

Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.

In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the largest group
of entrants since May last year, that British embassy officials in Warsaw
have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment offices "so that if people
wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had good information," Thompson
said.

"Free movement of people" was the dream of the founders of the European
Union, but in many parts of Europe today it is a battered notion. Fears that
so-called Polish plumbers and other low-cost workers would steal jobs away
were a main reason behind France's rejection of the EU constitution this
spring.

In contrast, the success of the East European migration to Britain has
bolstered supporters of the idea that the EU, in order to survive, must
continue on the path of integration.

The process has also allowed the legalization of East Europeans who lived in
the West before enlargement, some for decades, but until now had been unable
to register to work.

Britain, Ireland, and Sweden have managed the influx of the East Europeans
with little political fallout partly because they had low unemployment
rates. But their experience also seems to show that newcomers do not have to
strain social-security services.

The Swedish social security system allocated 18,000, or about $21,500, to
the incoming East Europeans, according to a report in September by the
European Citizen Action Service, a Brussels-based nonprofit organization.

In Britain, the new workers have contributed about £500 million, or $885.2
million, to the economy, the report estimated. At the same time, London
tightened requirements for newcomers seeking social assistance, saying that
people should come to work, not to soak up benefits; only 50 applications
were accepted, government statistics show.

There is some ambivalence in Britain about the arrival of the East
Europeans. Some of the loudest complaints have come from the older
generation of Poles, who moved to Britain during World War II and now gripe
about the brusque manners of the newcomers.

Britons working in manual trades say the newcomers are pushing wages down.

Jim Flanagin, a 48-year-old bricklayer, says East Europeans work for about a
quarter less than the £120 a bricklayer makes daily.

"It hasn't helped the wage structure," Flanagin said as he restored a wall
along the sidewalk on Lambeth Road in London. But he quickly added that East
Europeans were good workers whose presence had not brought tensions.

"Animosity? No. They're just making a living," he said. "There's a shortage
of skilled people anyway."

"The British are pretty tolerant people," added Flanagin, whose parents were
immigrants.

One surprising source of tolerance has been the British tabloids, which last
year ran headlines warning of a Slavic invasion. Now, at least one
newspaper, The Daily Mail, is castigating lazy Britons instead. This year,
the paper lamented the "dependency culture" of some Britons who rely on
unemployment and disability programs, going so far as to ask why the Scots
couldn't be more like the Poles. "The Poles are terrific people and foreign
workers tend to work a lot harder than the Scots," the newspaper quoted a
Scottish employer saying.

In cultural terms, the migration has reinvigorated Britain's aging Polish
community.

Polish waitresses, chambermaids, and construction workers come for a taste
of home at a row of shops on King Street in the west London neighborhood of
Hammersmith. Shops sell smoked fish, pierogi, Polish beer, and ready-made
meals of sauerkraut and sausages.

Ryszard Wolski, who runs a company that imports Polish food, says demand has
increased so sharply he is leaving his current warehouse for one five times
bigger. He distributes 26,400 cans and bottles of Polish beer a week.

The migration has been so sudden that many institutions are having trouble
expanding fast enough. Catholic worshipers at the 12 Polish-language
parishes in the London area are standing in the aisles and vestibules of
overflowing churches during Mass on weekends.

Polish-language so-called Saturday schools reported turning away hundreds of
children this autumn as workers brought their children to join them.

"There are lots of children who haven't been admitted," said Alexandra
Podhorodecka, chairwoman of the Polish Educational Society in Britain.
"There isn't physical space in the schools."

Only five percent of workers brought dependents with them, according to
British government statistics, but this could change in the months and years
to come.

British statistics show that the workers are disproportionately young - 82
percent are aged 18 to 34 - and willing to travel to both urban and rural
workplaces.

"Accession workers are continuing to go where the work is, helping to fill
gaps in our labor market," said a report by the Home Office released in
August.

The incoming workers took jobs in a broad range of fields, statistics show,
with maids, farmhands, waiters, cleaners, sales assistants, and kitchen
staff topping the list. But there were also nearly 300 doctors, 125
dentists, 40 bankers, 10 circus performers, 35 musicians, and 10
interpreters.

More than half of the registered workers were Poles, followed by
Lithuanians, Slovaks, Latvians, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, and
Slovenians.

Podhorodecka, who emigrated to Britain several decades ago, guesses that 80
percent of the newcomers will settle permanently in Britain, and worries
about the consequences for her homeland.

"It's an appalling situation for Poland," she said. "The country is
educating these people and they are leaving to work on building sites.
Poland does not need to be left with the unemployable."

Sometimes well-qualified arriving workers take "any sort of job" to improve
their English and adjust to life in Britain, then go on to work in their
profession, said Jan Mokrzycki, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great
Britain.

At the Polish cultural center in Hammersmith, a tall, blond Pole with a
master's degree in engineering said he worked at building sites doing manual
labor for about £900 a month. That is still five times more than what he
would earn in Warsaw, said the man, who gave his name as Rafal.

Other Poles have come to London simply to have fun.

In the western London neighborhood of Ealing, Anna Boryca, a 24-year-old
from the Polish city of Lublin, says she came because she wanted a break
from her studies in interior design. She waitresses in a café, buys lots of
clothing, and goes out to night clubs.

"I didn't come here with the intention to save," she said.

On a personal level, the migration is creating ties that bind, friendships
and contact between once-distant people.

Vytaute Kedyte, an 18-year-old Lithuanian waitress at Wodka, a Polish
restaurant in central London, says she is impressed with the familiarity of
the British with her country.

"They usually know Lithuania. They say, 'Are you from Vilnius?"' Kedyte
said. (She is actually from Klaidpeda, a Lithuanian port.)

The manager of the restaurant, Kasia Hitchcock, says frequent contact with
East Europeans has piqued the interest of Londoners in Polish food,
language, and the country itself.

She said travel agencies now advertise trips to Warsaw and Krakow,
once-obscure brands of vodka have become popular, and she runs into Britons
who have begun studying Polish.

Hitchcock, who is married to a Briton, has lived in the country for a
decade. "Finally we've put a stamp on things," she said.

Brian Lavery contributed to this article from Dublin and Ivar Ekman from
Stockholm.
LONDON It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a
half after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans
have washed into Britain.

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average
rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to allow unlimited
access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the
EU last year.

They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders,
and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic
enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and
Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.

But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these
workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and
economic growth continues apace.

Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in
Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be
one of the great migrations of recent decades.

Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields
like nursing and construction.

"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly skilled,
highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a diplomat at the
British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with the way it's progressed
over the first 16 months, and we're confident it will be a beneficial
relationship for both sides in the future."

Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland and Sweden,
the only other West European countries that opened their labor markets to
the new EU members.

With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still needs workers,
and immigration is actively encouraged. More than 128,000 East Europeans
from the new EU member states registered to work in Ireland from May 2004 to
August this year.

Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom come
from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish; last
summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin to Warsaw.

The phenomenon is more subdued in Sweden, where about 16,000 workers from
the new EU countries registered with the authorities between May 2004 and
early October this year. A substantial majority, about two thirds, were
Poles, followed by Lithuanians and Estonians.

Fearing a massive influx of East Europeans after enlargement, other West
European countries threw up barriers that will be lowered only gradually
over the next decade. A Pole seeking to work in France, for example, still
needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such permits to Poles in
the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number of Poles who arrive in
Britain every two days.

Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.

In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the largest group
of entrants since May last year, that British embassy officials in Warsaw
have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment offices "so that if people
wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had good information," Thompson
said.

"Free movement of people" was the dream of the founders of the European
Union, but in many parts of Europe today it is a battered notion. Fears that
so-called Polish plumbers and other low-cost workers would steal jobs away
were a main reason behind France's rejection of the EU constitution this
spring.

In contrast, the success of the East European migration to Britain has
bolstered supporters of the idea that the EU, in order to survive, must
continue on the path of integration.

The process has also allowed the legalization of East Europeans who lived in
the West before enlargement, some for decades, but until now had been unable
to register to work.

Britain, Ireland, and Sweden have managed the influx of the East Europeans
with little political fallout partly because they had low unemployment
rates. But their experience also seems to show that newcomers do not have to
strain social-security services.

The Swedish social security system allocated 18,000, or about $21,500, to
the incoming East Europeans, according to a report in September by the
European Citizen Action Service, a Brussels-based nonprofit organization.

In Britain, the new workers have contributed about £500 million, or $885.2
million, to the economy, the report estimated. At the same time, London
tightened requirements for newcomers seeking social assistance, saying that
people should come to work, not to soak up benefits; only 50 applications
were accepted, government statistics show.

There is some ambivalence in Britain about the arrival of the East
Europeans. Some of the loudest complaints have come from the older
generation of Poles, who moved to Britain during World War II and now gripe
about the brusque manners of the newcomers.

Britons working in manual trades say the newcomers are pushing wages down.

Jim Flanagin, a 48-year-old bricklayer, says East Europeans work for about a
quarter less than the £120 a bricklayer makes daily.

"It hasn't helped the wage structure," Flanagin said as he restored a wall
along the sidewalk on Lambeth Road in London. But he quickly added that East
Europeans were good workers whose presence had not brought tensions.

"Animosity? No. They're just making a living," he said. "There's a shortage
of skilled people anyway."

"The British are pretty tolerant people," added Flanagin, whose parents were
immigrants.

One surprising source of tolerance has been the British tabloids, which last
year ran headlines warning of a Slavic invasion. Now, at least one
newspaper, The Daily Mail, is castigating lazy Britons instead. This year,
the paper lamented the "dependency culture" of some Britons who rely on
unemployment and disability programs, going so far as to ask why the Scots
couldn't be more like the Poles. "The Poles are terrific people and foreign
workers tend to work a lot harder than the Scots," the newspaper quoted a
Scottish employer saying.

In cultural terms, the migration has reinvigorated Britain's aging Polish
community.

Polish waitresses, chambermaids, and construction workers come for a taste
of home at a row of shops on King Street in the west London neighborhood of
Hammersmith. Shops sell smoked fish, pierogi, Polish beer, and ready-made
meals of sauerkraut and sausages.

Ryszard Wolski, who runs a company that imports Polish food, says demand has
increased so sharply he is leaving his current warehouse for one five times
bigger. He distributes 26,400 cans and bottles of Polish beer a week.

The migration has been so sudden that many institutions are having trouble
expanding fast enough. Catholic worshipers at the 12 Polish-language
parishes in the London area are standing in the aisles and vestibules of
overflowing churches during Mass on weekends.

Polish-language so-called Saturday schools reported turning away hundreds of
children this autumn as workers brought their children to join them.

"There are lots of children who haven't been admitted," said Alexandra
Podhorodecka, chairwoman of the Polish Educational Society in Britain.
"There isn't physical space in the schools."

Only five percent of workers brought dependents with them, according to
British government statistics, but this could change in the months and years
to come.

British statistics show that the workers are disproportionately young - 82
percent are aged 18 to 34 - and willing to travel to both urban and rural
workplaces.

"Accession workers are continuing to go where the work is, helping to fill
gaps in our labor market," said a report by the Home Office released in
August.

The incoming workers took jobs in a broad range of fields, statistics show,
with maids, farmhands, waiters, cleaners, sales assistants, and kitchen
staff topping the list. But there were also nearly 300 doctors, 125
dentists, 40 bankers, 10 circus performers, 35 musicians, and 10
interpreters.

More than half of the registered workers were Poles, followed by
Lithuanians, Slovaks, Latvians, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, and
Slovenians.

Podhorodecka, who emigrated to Britain several decades ago, guesses that 80
percent of the newcomers will settle permanently in Britain, and worries
about the consequences for her homeland.

"It's an appalling situation for Poland," she said. "The country is
educating these people and they are leaving to work on building sites.
Poland does not need to be left with the unemployable."

Sometimes well-qualified arriving workers take "any sort of job" to improve
their English and adjust to life in Britain, then go on to work in their
profession, said Jan Mokrzycki, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great
Britain.

At the Polish cultural center in Hammersmith, a tall, blond Pole with a
master's degree in engineering said he worked at building sites doing manual
labor for about £900 a month. That is still five times more than what he
would earn in Warsaw, said the man, who gave his name as Rafal.

Other Poles have come to London simply to have fun.

In the western London neighborhood of Ealing, Anna Boryca, a 24-year-old
from the Polish city of Lublin, says she came because she wanted a break
from her studies in interior design. She waitresses in a café, buys lots of
clothing, and goes out to night clubs.

"I didn't come here with the intention to save," she said.

On a personal level, the migration is creating ties that bind, friendships
and contact between once-distant people.

Vytaute Kedyte, an 18-year-old Lithuanian waitress at Wodka, a Polish
restaurant in central London, says she is impressed with the familiarity of
the British with her country.

"They usually know Lithuania. They say, 'Are you from Vilnius?"' Kedyte
said. (She is actually from Klaidpeda, a Lithuanian port.)

The manager of the restaurant, Kasia Hitchcock, says frequent contact with
East Europeans has piqued the interest of Londoners in Polish food,
language, and the country itself.

She said travel agencies now advertise trips to Warsaw and Krakow,
once-obscure brands of vodka have become popular, and she runs into Britons
who have begun studying Polish.

Hitchcock, who is married to a Briton, has lived in the country for a
decade. "Finally we've put a stamp on things," she said.

Brian Lavery contributed to this article from Dublin and Ivar Ekman from
Stockholm.
LONDON It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a
half after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans
have washed into Britain.

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average
rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to allow unlimited
access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the
EU last year.

They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders,
and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic
enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and
Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.

But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these
workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and
economic growth continues apace.

Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in
Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be
one of the great migrations of recent decades.

Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields
like nursing and construction.

"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly skilled,
highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a diplomat at the
British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with the way it's progressed
over the first 16 months, and we're confident it will be a beneficial
relationship for both sides in the future."

Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland and Sweden,
the only other West European countries that opened their labor markets to
the new EU members.

With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still needs workers,
and immigration is actively encouraged. More than 128,000 East Europeans
from the new EU member states registered to work in Ireland from May 2004 to
August this year.

Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom come
from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish; last
summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin to Warsaw.

The phenomenon is more subdued in Sweden, where about 16,000 workers from
the new EU countries registered with the authorities between May 2004 and
early October this year. A substantial majority, about two thirds, were
Poles, followed by Lithuanians and Estonians.

Fearing a massive influx of East Europeans after enlargement, other West
European countries threw up barriers that will be lowered only gradually
over the next decade. A Pole seeking to work in France, for example, still
needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such permits to Poles in
the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number of Poles who arrive in
Britain every two days.

Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.

In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the largest group
of entrants since May last year, that British embassy officials in Warsaw
have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment offices "so that if people
wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had good information," Thompson
said.

"Free movement of people" was the dream of the founders of the European
Union, but in many parts of Europe today it is a battered notion. Fears that
so-called Polish plumbers and other low-cost workers would steal jobs away
were a main reason behind France's rejection of the EU constitution this
spring.

In contrast, the success of the East European migration to Britain has
bolstered supporters of the idea that the EU, in order to survive, must
continue on the path of integration.

The process has also allowed the legalization of East Europeans who lived in
the West before enlargement, some for decades, but until now had been unable
to register to work.

Britain, Ireland, and Sweden have managed the influx of the East Europeans
with little political fallout partly because they had low unemployment
rates. But their experience also seems to show that newcomers do not have to
strain social-security services.

The Swedish social security system allocated 18,000, or about $21,500, to
the incoming East Europeans, according to a report in September by the
European Citizen Action Service, a Brussels-based nonprofit organization.

In Britain, the new workers have contributed about £500 million, or $885.2
million, to the economy, the report estimated. At the same time, London
tightened requirements for newcomers seeking social assistance, saying that
people should come to work, not to soak up benefits; only 50 applications
were accepted, government statistics show.

There is some ambivalence in Britain about the arrival of the East
Europeans. Some of the loudest complaints have come from the older
generation of Poles, who moved to Britain during World War II and now gripe
about the brusque manners of the newcomers.

Britons working in manual trades say the newcomers are pushing wages down.

Jim Flanagin, a 48-year-old bricklayer, says East Europeans work for about a
quarter less than the £120 a bricklayer makes daily.

"It hasn't helped the wage structure," Flanagin said as he restored a wall
along the sidewalk on Lambeth Road in London. But he quickly added that East
Europeans were good workers whose presence had not brought tensions.

"Animosity? No. They're just making a living," he said. "There's a shortage
of skilled people anyway."

"The British are pretty tolerant people," added Flanagin, whose parents were
immigrants.

One surprising source of tolerance has been the British tabloids, which last
year ran headlines warning of a Slavic invasion. Now, at least one
newspaper, The Daily Mail, is castigating lazy Britons instead. This year,
the paper lamented the "dependency culture" of some Britons who rely on
unemployment and disability programs, going so far as to ask why the Scots
couldn't be more like the Poles. "The Poles are terrific people and foreign
workers tend to work a lot harder than the Scots," the newspaper quoted a
Scottish employer saying.

In cultural terms, the migration has reinvigorated Britain's aging Polish
community.

Polish waitresses, chambermaids, and construction workers come for a taste
of home at a row of shops on King Street in the west London neighborhood of
Hammersmith. Shops sell smoked fish, pierogi, Polish beer, and ready-made
meals of sauerkraut and sausages.

Ryszard Wolski, who runs a company that imports Polish food, says demand has
increased so sharply he is leaving his current warehouse for one five times
bigger. He distributes 26,400 cans and bottles of Polish beer a week.

The migration has been so sudden that many institutions are having trouble
expanding fast enough. Catholic worshipers at the 12 Polish-language
parishes in the London area are standing in the aisles and vestibules of
overflowing churches during Mass on weekends.

Polish-language so-called Saturday schools reported turning away hundreds of
children this autumn as workers brought their children to join them.

"There are lots of children who haven't been admitted," said Alexandra
Podhorodecka, chairwoman of the Polish Educational Society in Britain.
"There isn't physical space in the schools."

Only five percent of workers brought dependents with them, according to
British government statistics, but this could change in the months and years
to come.

British statistics show that the workers are disproportionately young - 82
percent are aged 18 to 34 - and willing to travel to both urban and rural
workplaces.

"Accession workers are continuing to go where the work is, helping to fill
gaps in our labor market," said a report by the Home Office released in
August.

The incoming workers took jobs in a broad range of fields, statistics show,
with maids, farmhands, waiters, cleaners, sales assistants, and kitchen
staff topping the list. But there were also nearly 300 doctors, 125
dentists, 40 bankers, 10 circus performers, 35 musicians, and 10
interpreters.

More than half of the registered workers were Poles, followed by
Lithuanians, Slovaks, Latvians, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, and
Slovenians.

Podhorodecka, who emigrated to Britain several decades ago, guesses that 80
percent of the newcomers will settle permanently in Britain, and worries
about the consequences for her homeland.

"It's an appalling situation for Poland," she said. "The country is
educating these people and they are leaving to work on building sites.
Poland does not need to be left with the unemployable."

Sometimes well-qualified arriving workers take "any sort of job" to improve
their English and adjust to life in Britain, then go on to work in their
profession, said Jan Mokrzycki, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great
Britain.

At the Polish cultural center in Hammersmith, a tall, blond Pole with a
master's degree in engineering said he worked at building sites doing manual
labor for about £900 a month. That is still five times more than what he
would earn in Warsaw, said the man, who gave his name as Rafal.

Other Poles have come to London simply to have fun.

In the western London neighborhood of Ealing, Anna Boryca, a 24-year-old
from the Polish city of Lublin, says she came because she wanted a break
from her studies in interior design. She waitresses in a café, buys lots of
clothing, and goes out to night clubs.

"I didn't come here with the intention to save," she said.

On a personal level, the migration is creating ties that bind, friendships
and contact between once-distant people.

Vytaute Kedyte, an 18-year-old Lithuanian waitress at Wodka, a Polish
restaurant in central London, says she is impressed with the familiarity of
the British with her country.

"They usually know Lithuania. They say, 'Are you from Vilnius?"' Kedyte
said. (She is actually from Klaidpeda, a Lithuanian port.)

The manager of the restaurant, Kasia Hitchcock, says frequent contact with
East Europeans has piqued the interest of Londoners in Polish food,
language, and the country itself.

She said travel agencies now advertise trips to Warsaw and Krakow,
once-obscure brands of vodka have become popular, and she runs into Britons
who have begun studying Polish.

Hitchcock, who is married to a Briton, has lived in the country for a
decade. "Finally we've put a stamp on things," she said.

Brian Lavery contributed to this article from Dublin and Ivar Ekman from
Stockholm.
LONDON It turns out the doomsayers were partly right: Nearly a year and a
half after the expansion of the European Union, floods of East Europeans
have washed into Britain.

Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and other Easterners are arriving at an average
rate of 16,000 a month, a result of Britain's decision to allow unlimited
access to the citizens of the eight East European countries that joined the
EU last year.

They work as bus drivers, farmhands and dentists, as waitresses, builders,
and saleswomen; they are transforming parts of London into Slavic and Baltic
enclaves where pickles and Polish beer are stacked in delicatessens and
Polish can be heard on the streets almost as often as English.

But the doomsayers were also wrong: Multicultural Britain has absorbed these
workers like a sponge. Unemployment is still rock-bottom at 4.7 percent, and
economic growth continues apace.

Since May 2004, more than 230,000 East Europeans have registered to work in
Britain, many more than the government expected, in what is shaping up to be
one of the great migrations of recent decades.

Yet the government says it still has shortages of 600,000 workers in fields
like nursing and construction.

"They are coming in and making a very good reputation as highly skilled,
highly motivated workers," said Christopher Thompson, a diplomat at the
British Embassy in Warsaw. "The U.K. is pleased with the way it's progressed
over the first 16 months, and we're confident it will be a beneficial
relationship for both sides in the future."

Tens of thousands of East Europeans have also moved to Ireland and Sweden,
the only other West European countries that opened their labor markets to
the new EU members.

With nearly full employment, Ireland's booming economy still needs workers,
and immigration is actively encouraged. More than 128,000 East Europeans
from the new EU member states registered to work in Ireland from May 2004 to
August this year.

Irish society seems to be adjusting to the newcomers, 45,000 of whom come
from Poland. A newspaper in Limerick now runs a column in Polish; last
summer the national bus company began a daily service from Dublin to Warsaw.

The phenomenon is more subdued in Sweden, where about 16,000 workers from
the new EU countries registered with the authorities between May 2004 and
early October this year. A substantial majority, about two thirds, were
Poles, followed by Lithuanians and Estonians.

Fearing a massive influx of East Europeans after enlargement, other West
European countries threw up barriers that will be lowered only gradually
over the next decade. A Pole seeking to work in France, for example, still
needs to apply for a work permit. France issued 737 such permits to Poles in
the 10 months after enlargement; that is the number of Poles who arrive in
Britain every two days.

Poles who go to Britain, in contrast, do not need any special permission.

In fact, Britain is so eager to recruit more Poles, by far the largest group
of entrants since May last year, that British embassy officials in Warsaw
have distributed brochures at Polish unemployment offices "so that if people
wanted to go to the United Kingdom they had good information," Thompson
said.

"Free movement of people" was the dream of the founders of the European
Union, but in many parts of Europe today it is a battered notion. Fears that
so-called Polish plumbers and other low-cost workers would steal jobs away
were a main reason behind France's rejection of the EU constitution this
spring.

In contrast, the success of the East European migration to Britain has
bolstered supporters of the idea that the EU, in order to survive, must
continue on the path of integration.

The process has also allowed the legalization of East Europeans who lived in
the West before enlargement, some for decades, but until now had been unable
to register to work.

Britain, Ireland, and Sweden have managed the influx of the East Europeans
with little political fallout partly because they had low unemployment
rates. But their experience also seems to show that newcomers do not have to
strain social-security services.

The Swedish social security system allocated 18,000, or about $21,500, to
the incoming East Europeans, according to a report in September by the
European Citizen Action Service, a Brussels-based nonprofit organization.

In Britain, the new workers have contributed about £500 million, or $885.2
million, to the economy, the report estimated. At the same time, London
tightened requirements for newcomers seeking social assistance, saying that
people should come to work, not to soak up benefits; only 50 applications
were accepted, government statistics show.

There is some ambivalence in Britain about the arrival of the East
Europeans. Some of the loudest complaints have come from the older
generation of Poles, who moved to Britain during World War II and now gripe
about the brusque manners of the newcomers.

Britons working in manual trades say the newcomers are pushing wages down.

Jim Flanagin, a 48-year-old bricklayer, says East Europeans work for about a
quarter less than the £120 a bricklayer makes daily.

"It hasn't helped the wage structure," Flanagin said as he restored a wall
along the sidewalk on Lambeth Road in London. But he quickly added that East
Europeans were good workers whose presence had not brought tensions.

"Animosity? No. They're just making a living," he said. "There's a shortage
of skilled people anyway."

"The British are pretty tolerant people," added Flanagin, whose parents were
immigrants.

One surprising source of tolerance has been the British tabloids, which last
year ran headlines warning of a Slavic invasion. Now, at least one
newspaper, The Daily Mail, is castigating lazy Britons instead. This year,
the paper lamented the "dependency culture" of some Britons who rely on
unemployment and disability programs, going so far as to ask why the Scots
couldn't be more like the Poles. "The Poles are terrific people and foreign
workers tend to work a lot harder than the Scots," the newspaper quoted a
Scottish employer saying.

In cultural terms, the migration has reinvigorated Britain's aging Polish
community.

Polish waitresses, chambermaids, and construction workers come for a taste
of home at a row of shops on King Street in the west London neighborhood of
Hammersmith. Shops sell smoked fish, pierogi, Polish beer, and ready-made
meals of sauerkraut and sausages.

Ryszard Wolski, who runs a company that imports Polish food, says demand has
increased so sharply he is leaving his current warehouse for one five times
bigger. He distributes 26,400 cans and bottles of Polish beer a week.

The migration has been so sudden that many institutions are having trouble
expanding fast enough. Catholic worshipers at the 12 Polish-language
parishes in the London area are standing in the aisles and vestibules of
overflowing churches during Mass on weekends.

Polish-language so-called Saturday schools reported turning away hundreds of
children this autumn as workers brought their children to join them.

"There are lots of children who haven't been admitted," said Alexandra
Podhorodecka, chairwoman of the Polish Educational Society in Britain.
"There isn't physical space in the schools."

Only five percent of workers brought dependents with them, according to
British government statistics, but this could change in the months and years
to come.

British statistics show that the workers are disproportionately young - 82
percent are aged 18 to 34 - and willing to travel to both urban and rural
workplaces.

"Accession workers are continuing to go where the work is, helping to fill
gaps in our labor market," said a report by the Home Office released in
August.

The incoming workers took jobs in a broad range of fields, statistics show,
with maids, farmhands, waiters, cleaners, sales assistants, and kitchen
staff topping the list. But there were also nearly 300 doctors, 125
dentists, 40 bankers, 10 circus performers, 35 musicians, and 10
interpreters.

More than half of the registered workers were Poles, followed by
Lithuanians, Slovaks, Latvians, Czechs, Hungarians, Estonians, and
Slovenians.

Podhorodecka, who emigrated to Britain several decades ago, guesses that 80
percent of the newcomers will settle permanently in Britain, and worries
about the consequences for her homeland.

"It's an appalling situation for Poland," she said. "The country is
educating these people and they are leaving to work on building sites.
Poland does not need to be left with the unemployable."

Sometimes well-qualified arriving workers take "any sort of job" to improve
their English and adjust to life in Britain, then go on to work in their
profession, said Jan Mokrzycki, chairman of the Federation of Poles in Great
Britain.

At the Polish cultural center in Hammersmith, a tall, blond Pole with a
master's degree in engineering said he worked at building sites doing manual
labor for about £900 a month. That is still five times more than what he
would earn in Warsaw, said the man, who gave his name as Rafal.

Other Poles have come to London simply to have fun.

In the western London neighborhood of Ealing, Anna Boryca, a 24-year-old
from the Polish city of Lublin, says she came because she wanted a break
from her studies in interior design. She waitresses in a café, buys lots of
clothing, and goes out to night clubs.

"I didn't come here with the intention to save," she said.

On a personal level, the migration is creating ties that bind, friendships
and contact between once-distant people.

Vytaute Kedyte, an 18-year-old Lithuanian waitress at Wodka, a Polish
restaurant in central London, says she is impressed with the familiarity of
the British with her country.

"They usually know Lithuania. They say, 'Are you from Vilnius?"' Kedyte
said. (She is actually from Klaidpeda, a Lithuanian port.)

The manager of the restaurant, Kasia Hitchcock, says frequent contact with
East Europeans has piqued the interest of Londoners in Polish food,
language, and the country itself.

She said travel agencies now advertise trips to Warsaw and Krakow,
once-obscure brands of vodka have become popular, and she runs into Britons
who have begun studying Polish.

Hitchcock, who is married to a Briton, has lived in the country for a
decade. "Finally we've put a stamp on things," she said.

Brian Lavery contributed to this article from Dublin and Ivar Ekman from
Stockholm.