100,000 Eastern European migrants now free to claim full benefits in Britain worth tens of millions of pounds after EU ruling

Daily Mail
"Critics said Labour made a ‘huge mistake’ when agreeing that the rules would last for just seven years and called safeguards ‘paper thin’.Since the EU expanded in 2004, Britain has experienced its largest ever wave of migration – despite official predictions that just 13,000 workers would want to move here. .....More than a million have joined the scheme and figures suggest there are some 625,000 still in work in the UK.

But from May migrants from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the Czech Republic will simply have to pass a ‘habitual residency test’ – showing they have been looking for work for three months.The only other requirement is that they show benefits officials where they live, prove they want to settle here and show any employment history.At that point they can get access to a council tax rebate, housing benefit worth hundreds of pounds a week and jobseeker’s allowance of £65 a week.The change in rules will also lead to a rise in the number of eastern Europeans living in Britain who receive child benefit for children still living in their home country.