Holland set to boot out Polish immigrants who can't find work after 3 months.

worded wrote: »

How long - approx 1 year.

Im not blaming the Polish for our govt. We spend 1/3 of Irelands income on SW. It cant continue as we are borrowing to pay it.

If they only worked for 1 year then they get no JSB.
JSA is means tested and subject to HRC - I can't see how they could be classed as habitually resident in Ireland after that short amount of time.

Either the HRC rule is not being applied properly or I have misunderstood it.

To me this sounds a little bit like a xenophobic card being played in the Netherlands.

As it stands, there are absolutely no EU rules that require countries to pay social welfare to people who just waltz in and have never worked there and have made no contributions to the social welfare / social insurance fund.

So, unless the Dutch are being a bit stupid and just paying welfare to anyone who asks, then there really should not be a problem.

The suggestion is that someone who is Polish and who has made their home in the Netherlands and has found they have no work for three months can be chucked out. That seems blatantly unfair.

Remember, the Netherlands has a big audience for xenophobic politics! It's not the hippy-dippy, hash-smoking, liberal place many of us think it is.

As for the Irish system encouraging a situation where people stay on the dole - That's a problem in the Irish system itself. Such "welfare traps" should be removed from any properly functioning taxation and welfare system.

Things like loss of medical card cover in Ireland is ridiculous. In most European countries that's a non issue as we are probably the only one that does not have a full universal health insurance system.

Perhaps by this logic Spain should boot out all the Dutch OAPs sponging off the Spanish hospitals and welfare system while sunning themselves on the Costa del Sol?

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Nobody is suggesting anyone pick on OAPs.... unless those OAPs have just recently hitched a ride on the welfare bandwagon in which case yes they should be booted out.

I'm just saying that there are hundreds of thousands of Dutch, German, British, Irish and other Northern European pensioners who have opted to move to the warmer places in the EU using this freedom of movement right too.

Many of them are a significant burden on the healthcare systems and other support services in countries like Spain. In fact, speaking to some Irish and British pensioners, some of them actually move there because the healthcare system in Spain is far better than in England or Ireland.

So, I mean, by that logic, if you are going to boot out unemployed construction workers who have hit hard times, then perhaps Spain should equally just tell the pensioners who are resident there to take a hike too.

I find there's a "holier than thou" attitude taken by wealthier Northern European countries in this kind of debate about freedom of movement.

Repairing the problems and loopholes in the welfare systems to reduce scammers and putting in place a system of proper cross-payments between social funds where people do move would be a more useful solution!

Freedom of movement has also provided NL with a pool of labour that it would simply not have had access to a few decades ago. This has allowed for a lot of economic activity that would have just been impossible without EU freedom of movement. It's also attracted a huge number of high-end workers into major dutch cities in areas like R&D etc etc... So, it's not all as horrendous as a bunch of right-wing xenophobes would have you believe.

Has someone confirmed if they are kicking only eastern europeans out, or all EU citizens? If it is the latter - Then I don't see a problem with it. If it is the former, it is most certainly a stupid policy.