They’ve stopped mincing their words in these parts. Even the social workers and the worthiest public sector grandees have given up dancing around one of the great taboos of our age and realise that it needs to be addressed head-on.
Hence there is little talk of ‘multi-culturalism’ here in Boston, the Lincolnshire cabbage capital.
Instead, everyone in this handsome old market town simply talks about ‘immigration’ — none more so, it seems, than the immigrants themselves.
For as Britain prepares to open up the workplace and the welfare state to the people of Bulgaria and Romania at the start of next year, none will feel the impact more than all the recent arrivals from Poland, Latvia and Lithuania who have made Boston the most Eastern European town in Britain.
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The population of Boston in Lincolnshire has grown by more than 15 per cent to 65,000 in a decade, most of that increase being from Eastern European countries like PolandEvidence of the influx of east European immigrants can be seen all around the town. In this picture The Baltic Food Store can be seen next to the Romanian shop and the car parked outside has a Latvian number plate
Ziedonis Barbaks, leader of Boston’s substantial Latvian community, points out: ‘The Romanians and Bulgarians will just repeat what happened before.
‘The [employment] agencies and gang-masters will start hiring them, at a lower cost, instead of the Polish and Latvians and Lithuanians. Then what?’
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If that happens, Britain could find itself with a new welfare bombshell — supporting all those migrants displaced from the workplace as well as all the indigenous British who are out of it already.
Some EU newcomers — no one seems to know how many — have already plugged in to the benefits system (as they can after just three months).
Take, for example, the Latvian woman in Boston who has made national news for having ten children and annual welfare receipts of £34,000.
Voice of the people: Rachel Bull spoke out on the BBC's Question Time about her home town of Boston, saying it was at 'breaking point' due to the level of immigration Immigration: Transitional arrangements in place since 2005, which restrict the rights of 29million Bulgarian and Romanian citizens to live and work in other EU states, will expire soon
