Just a few days after Nicholas Soames said that annual immigration must be slashed by three-quarters to prevent the UK population reaching 70 million by 2030, it was revealed that a new wave of immigration from Eastern Europe edged closer last night after Romania promised to fast-track a back-door route into Britain.

Tens of thousands of citizens from Moldova – Europe’s poorest country – will soon be granted rights to live and work in the UK and other EU states as part of a controversial Bucharest policy offering Romanian citizenship.

Romanian President Traian Basescu reaffirmed his earlier pledge to offer EU rights to Moldovans, owing to historical links, during a state visit to the impoverished former Soviet state last week.

He announced the creation of a new citizenship agency to fast-track the one million applications the Romanian government has already received to go alongside a new nationality law granting citizenship in just five months.

He said: “The government will issue an emergency decree to set up a special Nationality Agency granting Romanian citizenship.”

Moldovans do not need a visa to live or work in Romania, but prize an EU passport for the right to travel to richer states such as the UK to seek financial reward.

Last night there was growing anger that Romania will have the facility to release a new influx of migrant workers. Sir Andrew Green of MigrationWatch UK described the Romanian policy as “outrageous”.

He said: “It’s high time the EU addressed the issue of who is ­entitled to an EU passport.

“At present it’s entirely in the hands of individual governments with bizarre decisions, often for internal political reasons.

“The Romanians, Greeks, Spanish and Italians all seem to dish out passports to a wide range of people with historical, often tenuous, connections to their countries.”

Moldova was part of Romania until 1940 when it was annexed by the Soviet Union. It gained independence in 1991 and 80 per cent of the four million population is ethnic Romanian. However, Moldova is now Europe’s poorest country. Eighty per cent of the population struggle to survive on less than £1 a day. And nine out of 10 young Moldovans plan to leave the country, according to a UN report.

Some 600,000 Moldovans already work abroad in Britain and other parts of Europe – legally and illegally. More than a million eastern Europeans came to the UK after Britain opened its doors to the so-called A8 countries – Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia – when they joined the EU in 2004.

Tens of thousands more came from Romania and Bulgaria after they became EU members in 2007.

We said before, there is nothing we can do to prevent people with an EU passport coming to the UK, unless we leave the EU.

This is why David Cameron’ claim that he will put a cap on the number of immigrants is a lie because he doesn’t have the power to do it.

What would Margaret Hodge has to say about that?

Don’t hold your breath.

GIUSEPPE DE SANTIS

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