Migrants came 'out of the shadows' after controls lifted

jobs such as fruit picking, or if they were self-employed.

Last night, MPs and academics said that the “huge” rise in NI numbers issued last year showed that Britain’s borders had not been properly controlled.

Experts at Oxford University said many Romanians and Bulgarians may have moved to Britain while the restrictions were still in place and claimed they were selfemployed, but were in fact working as employees on building projects or in other “cash-in-hand” jobs, without formal contracts.

Carlos Vargas-Silva, an economist at Oxford’s Migration Observatory, said: “These fig- ures give the impression that many of these people were here already doing something but we don’t know what that something was.

“There is a possibility that many of these people were in that informal economy without the proper permits to work.”

Keith Vaz, chairman of Parliament’s home affairs select committee, said the “huge” rise showed migrants who were already working had “come out of the shadows”.

“It is clear that January 1 last year provided people with the opportunity for the first time of working legally. Romanians and Bulgarians who were working in the black market and in the shadows had to obtain National Insur- ance numbers in order to become employees,” he said.

“There is still a massive problem in tracking and monitoring people who come over.”

Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP for Amber Valley who led a campaign to extend the employment restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians, said voters feared a sudden increase in legally registered workers would make it harder for British people to find work.

“Nobody objects to having people come here when we need the skills. But equally we can’t just have unlimited numbers of unskilled people turning up looking for work. We have still got a lot of people out there who need jobs. It’s not sustainable,” he said.