Polish Immigration and the U.K - Dissertation Example

In May 2011, Polish immigration was back on the rise again with some 545,000 Polish passport holders currently (2011) living in the United Kingdom. Back in 2003, only 75,000 were living in the U.K., the year before Poland joined the European Union in hopes of finding ways to jump-start its own economy (Pidd 2011). Nearly 43,000 Poles immigrated over from September 2009 to September 2010 whereas, before that, there had been a drop of 12,000 Poles who had moved back to Poland. Yet, it would appear that Poland, as a country,  had not lived up to expectations in job development and economic growth.

So, back to England they went, not because England was having any sort of economic boom but that even poorly paid jobs in the U.K. were better than anything they were finding back home. Most of the immigrant Poles were from the eastern part of Poland which is typically poorer than the rest of the country (Pidd 2011).In a more general population overview, immigrants to the U.K. tend to be more working age people such as students and those looking for jobs and, as these people flow in, an increase in aggregate demand also occurs, increasing spending which impacts GDP (Pettinger 2012).

During the middle of the last decade, more Eastern Europeans, such as the Polish, immigrated to the U.K. because of demand for builders and plumbers. The U.K. population is also aging and this meant that with younger immigrants coming in to pick up such jobs, they would be paying income taxes but not so likely to be claiming benefits. Additionally, with nearly 428,225 international students studying in the U.K. in 2010 to 2011, this influx contributed ?2.5 billion to the educational sector and helped finance domestic students’ education as well (Pettinger 2012).

Yet, there is the problem of overcrowding, particularly in cities and limited areas for building more residential areas because of the desire to maintain a certain amount of green area. The European Union (EU), overall, was hit hard during the economic crisis and government budgets and employment outcomes were not what had been hoped for, even from a few years back. The aggregate government budget for the EU went from less than