BB FANS

21:41pm 12th August 2006

Tens of thousands of Eastern European migrants living in Britain are exploiting a loophole in the law to claim UK child benefit for children they have left behind.

Migrant workers from new EU member states including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania, are signing up in droves for the cash, funded by British taxpayers.

The Mail on Sunday has learned that more than 50,000 Poles have also applied for the handouts so far this year.
In Poland, parents do not have an automatic right to state benefits for their children. Even those payments which are available are strictly means-tested and very few people qualify.

But under EU rules, Polish and other Eastern European parents working in Britain can leave their children at home and still qualify for UK money - £907.40 a year for a single child and £608.40 for each additional one.

At the current rate, even if they claim for only one child, the Polish applications alone will already have cost the taxpayer £45million this year.

To successfully claim, the migrants must be registered to work in Britain. British Customs officials then check with authorities in their home countries to confirm they have children to support.

In Poland, state agencies have been swamped by these checks from Britain. Requests for proof are arriving at a rate of more than 1,000 a week.

Full report DailyMail

GREAT Britain eh?

do parents really get that much money for kids?

fook me!, think'll go out and get a few women up the duff

Lol, hippo...

That may not make as much economic sense as you think.

;-)

So 50,000 Poles have Applied for the money, how many have actually got it, seems a typical Daily Mail reactionary crap story to me

I never take anything the Mail says seriously.

More responsible reporting from the Mail then?

Why don't they just do a front page which says "You're Different From Us - Not In My Back Yard!" and just be done with it? All this backhanded snidey stuff about "foreigners nicking our cash" is a load of crap.

People from Poland come over here to WORK. And they have to work HARD, mostly in jobs that no-one else wants to do, and which are the lowest paid. The pay is rubbish in Poland, but they get just as exploited over here. Why shouldnt they claim benefits for their kids? Rather them than some bloke with ten kids in a council house who hasn't worked for 15 years because of a "dodgy back". Why doesn't the Daily Mail target them? Oh, because they're white and British.

Will the Daily Mail be backing the BNP at the next election? They might as well be.

Having got parents who get the Daily Mail, I usually have a peek when I go round and visit them, and I am surprised that they are allowed to call themselves a newspaper. Their front page story is rarely news and consists of scaremongering with the emphasis usually being on immigration. As TD says, they may as well back the BNP at the next election, because they are providing a breeding ground for their support with their scare stories.

The thing is their stories are never usually stories in the first place. It's their slant on something which could happen in the worst case scenario. You could get a situation where a country joins the European Union. Now if that country has 100,000 immigrants/refugees of their own, the Daily Mail will cover their front page with "Britain opens door to 100,000 refugees".

It is propaganda on a level that Hitler would be proud.

Interesting article in the Independent today about some of the "stories" that have come out recently about this issue:

HERE

Very interesting article. I've got a copy of today's Indy and I have to say it's a fairly well-balanced set of reports. I know it's history now but there was a time when it seemed okay for Brits to go rampaging around the world claiming entire nations and their resources theirs, not just a few quid in benefits or a few jobs that nobody wants to do. Funny how the same generation is moaning about people now coming over here...