Don’t worry about the Bulgarians flooding the country
FOR a lot of them have already left Bulgaria. There aren’t that many left to leave.
As you may or may not know soon enough the Bulgarians and Romanians will be free to immigrate into the UK under the EU rules. They had to wait 7 years before they got the same freedom of movement that the rest of us have and those 7 years are just about up.
So, are we going to see a flood of Bulgarians similar to the flood of Poles we had a few years back? Many of whom have gone home again but not all.
It looks like we won’t no:
According to the 2011 census, Bulgaria has lost no less than 582,000 people over the last ten years. In a country of 7.3 million inhabitants this is a big deal. Further, it has lost a total of 1.5 million of its population since 1985, a record in depopulation not just for the EU, but also by global standards. The country, which had a population of almost nine million in 1985, now has almost the same number of inhabitants as in 1945 after World war II. And, of course, the decline continues.
There just aren’t that many Bulgarians to begin with. And those that might want to leave have already been doing so. Obviously, it ain’t gonna be the pensioners who scurry over to Britain and the population there is ageing as the birth rate collapsed some decades ago.
It’s possible that there might be some immigration, of course. But it’ll be in the range of thousands of people, not the hundreds of thousands that came those few years ago. The actual effect of it is going to be trivial at worst.
Photo: Bulgarian “kukeri” dancers perform during the 22nd edition of the International Festival of Masquerade Games “Surva” in the town of Pernik, Bulgaria Saturday, Feb. 2, 2013. Some 5000 participants take part in the festival devoted to an ancient Bulgarian pagan rite performed in the region.
Posted: 25th, February 2013 | In: Money Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
