The Big Issue and Romanians

If you have walked through any town or city in the UK you will find people selling the magazine - The Big Issue. This magazine was set up by John Bird about twenty years ago to help homeless people. Its vendors, who buy bundles of the magazine and keep the profits when they sell them, are required to declare themselves self-employed with HMRC.

What has happened over the last year or so is Romanians have been coming into the country and exploiting the tax system. They are able to claim welfare payments such as Housing Benefit and Working Tax Credits if they register as vendors of the Big Issue - and then declare themselves self-employed.

The issue has been a particular problem in Manchester; Simon Ashley, a councillor in Manchester said: “I believe The Big Issue in the North is allowing itself to be used as a gateway to benefits dependency. “Fundamentally, these people aren’t homeless – they are all in houses. But because they’ve found a loophole which gives them access to benefits, selling the magazine is now an end in itself and not about genuine self-employment.”

Self-employed status is particularly valuable to Romanian immigrants, as it entitles them to start claiming benefits they would not otherwise receive since the eastern European country only joined the EU in 2007.

This is no longer an issue just for the north of England, but has spread further south, as we have two Romanian Big Issue sellers in the town I live in and I saw another one in the town of Southwold in Suffolk.

I have a major problem with this issue, and the authorities should be cracking down on this problem. I have written before a number of times about my concerns and anger of the issue of mass immigration. I see that for many this issue is not a problem simply because it does not affect them. But for many the impact of immigration has been huge.

Without going into detail, those at the bottom of the social scale are the ones which are affected by the problems in our society. The majority of crime does not impact upon those living on a nice estate in a suburb but impacts upon inner city areas where the poorest live. Finding a house is not an issue for those with plenty of money, for those at the bottom it is; as the vast majority of migrants live in houses which the poorest would live in, those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale then struggle to find a house. Joblessness does not impact upon middle class and upper class people because they do middle class jobs like; doctors, solicitors, bank managers, etc. Those at the lower end of the economic scale are the ones who do the cleaning jobs, catering jobs, caring jobs, factory work, etc. These are the jobs that the vast majority of migrants do, they do not, on the whole do skilled work. This has been borne out by home Office figures which showed that of the 3 million immigrants who have come to this country since 2004 only 18,000 have taken skilled work.

What is now happening is that those at the very very bottom (the homeless), are now being affected, which to be honest makes me very angry! Those who legitimately need the money are now seeing that one area of guaranteed income now being taken away and being handed to those who are do not need it. Those who argue in favour of this idiotic policy of open door immigration do not understand the damage being done to so many lives. For many the Big Issue was a lifeline which gave them hope, but that hope is now being taken away.

As the Manchester councillor says, these Romanians are not homeless, and thus not desperate for the money. They are just exploiting the system to get money out of the British tax payer. This then has a knock on affect upon one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

For years many in the seats of power accused anyone who raised their concerns about immigration as being racist. This is clearly not about race, it is about so many issues which impacts upon this country. I have written many times about this issue and all I can see is that our politicians do not really care, if they did they would close the door and stop all immigration into this country.

This one issue in itself highlights the idiocy, inhumanity and immorality of a system which is destroying the lives of so many people, particularly those at the bottom of the social scale. Unfortunately these people do not have a loud voice and so they are never heard, and their situation can only get worse.

The Big Issue was set up to give people hope, unfortunately this one beacon of hope is now going out.