BBC News report on the same information

'Benefit claims

At the Goodwin Trust Sylwia Szewczyk is as community cohesion co-ordinator.

"This week about 10 people have come saying they've been made redundant.

"Mostly they have no qualifications, they can't speak English, and they can't claim benefits. But they try to stay in the UK and it's quite difficult for them." '........

'Unemployment in Poland is currently 11.1%, compared to 6.7% in the UK.

"They stay because they came to the UK to succeed. For them going back to Poland would be shaming," says Sylwia.

There's more than anecdotal evidence that Poles and migrant workers from other former communist countries are choosing to sit out the global downturn in the UK rather than returning home.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for last year show a 40% rise in income-related benefit claims, compared with the year before, from citizens of the eight eastern European countries which joined the EU in 2004 - known as the A8 countries.


But the biggest impact seems to be increasingly tough competition for jobs rather than benefit claims.

Outside the Britannia job centre in Hull, there's a steady stream of people.

There are 28 people on job seekers' allowance per job vacancy in Hull - and you don't have to look far to find resentment.

"It gets people down, these migrants taking all our jobs. Added to the recession, it is one problem on top of another," says a man leaving the job centre.

He declines to give his name..'

a bit like our cowardly nasty nazi 'guests' really