To United Kingdom!

The UK has witnessed an influx of immigrants since the EU expanded to welcome 10 new states in 2004. A total of 683,000 eastern Europeans, mostly Poles, have applied to work in Britain, one of the few EU countries that did not initially impose restrictions on citizens of the accession countries. When Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU this year, however, the UK government decided to impose restrictions on their citizens seeking to work in the UK. In the first half of 2007, just 17,360 Bulgarians and Romanians arrived in the UK, far below many expectations of up to 300,000 in the first year. The overall rate of immigration has slowed considerably in the past year. In the second quarter of 2007, applications fell to 50,000 - 6,000 lower than the same period in 2006.