Migrants from poorer countries could be banned from Britain to curb benefits tourism.

                                             Workers from poor parts of Europe should be banned from moving to Britain until their home country’s economy has improved, David Cameron suggested today.

The Prime Minister said tougher restrictions will be needed in future to stop an influx of migrants flocking to the UK in search of work and higher earnings.

The radical idea emerged as Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan defied the EU to declare that benefit tourism ‘will not be allowed on my watch’.

The government has vowed to tackle the ‘pull factors’ including access to benefits which it claims attract migrants to Britain.                                                                                                                                         

From January, Bulgarians and Romanians will gain the same rights to work in the UK as other EU citizens and thousands are expected to move here.

 But Mr Cameron warned that problems with immigration only emerge when people choose Britain as a destination to settle because it is one of the wealthiest countries in Europe.

‘We're putting in very tough measures and controls but I think in the future we will need to go further,’ he told workers at a Tetlea tea factory in Stockton-on-Tees.

He said that if other countries move to join the European Union in future the UK should insist on longer transitions .

He added: ‘Perhaps even saying until you reach a proper share of an average European Union GDP you can't have freedom of movement.

‘The reason for that is if you look at migration between Britain and Germany or France and Germany, countries of pretty even GDP, the movements are pretty much balanced.

‘It’s only when you have a real imbalance when you have a poor country and a much wealthier country that you get these vast movements.

‘Perhaps saying until your economy, until your wealth is similar to our wealth you can't have unrestricted movement.' The government has unveiled a crackdown on benefit tourism, ahead of the lifting of controls on newcomers from Romania and Bulgaria.                                                                                                                          

It includes rules that EU jobseekers will no longer be paid housing benefit to subsidise accommodation costs, there will be time limits before out-of-work benefits can be claimed and migrants who currently get jobseekers’ allowance after less than a month will have to wait three months before claiming.

Net migration in Britain is on the rise – driven by workers from Spain and other southern Europe countries fleeing the collapse of their eurozone economies, figures have shown.

Immigration from the European Union (EU) increased to 183,000 in the year ending June, up from 158,000 the previous year.                                                                                                                                         

There was a 'statistically significant' increase in citizens arriving for work-related reasons from the so-called EU15, which includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

Mr Cameron added: I know an influx of non skilled workers is a major cause of concern. We belong to the European Union where there are rules saying that if you apply for a job in another country you can go and take that job.                                                                                                                                                

‘That enables British people to go and work in Germany, Spain or elsewhere and it enables European nationals to come and work here.

‘But there are two things we've absolutely got to get right, firstly when a new country joins the European Union they should not have automatic access to our market.                                                                          

‘Poland and the other eastern European countries joined in 2004 and they were given instant access to British jobs even though Poland and those countries are much poorer than us.

‘As a result the numbers that came were far bigger than anyone expected, 1.5 million came, it was one of the biggest movements in population we've seen in the last few decades.

‘That was under the last government and it was a very bad decision and we must not make that mistake again.’

From next week migrants arriving in the UK will have to  demonstrate a ‘reasonable standard of English’ or be barred from claiming benefit.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      posted by Emanto Ngaloru Nov 13, 2013.