DOCUMENTARY Romanians in the UK: bad timing (english subtitles)

A team of Romanian journalist went to the UK and spoke with politicians, police officers, journalists, British citizens and Romanian immigrants, either successful people or homeless men and women. We wanted to see if there`s any truth in all the shock-stories that announced a `flood` of Romanians in 2014.

„Adevărul” has launched a written series and a film documentary about the Romanian community in the United Kingdom. This is the first time when the story of the `Romanian flood` is being told by a Romanian media organisation.

We were in the UK early February, a month after the work restrictions for Romanian and Bulgarian citizens were lifted by the UK, along with other eight states in the European Union. By this time is was no longer a surprise that the Romanian flood did not come, but the media and the politicians were busy with other, real floods. Still, we found that the British public has been manipulated and largely misinformed. 

Although there were nine countries that were opening up their labor markets to Romanians and Bulgarians, it was only in the UK where a true hysteria had been raised. 

In our time there, we spoke to politicians from all the major political parties, including UKIP, the far-right party that claimed that 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians will come to the UK beginning January 2014. UKIP had made it clear that it believes that these immigrants will claims social benefits in the UK. Tim Aker, UKIP`s head of policy, had no idea about how many claims for social benefits the UK gets every year. Not the total number, not the percentage submitted by immigrants, not the number of claims made by Romanian immigrants. 

DOCUMENTARY Romanians in the UK: Bad timing (english subtitles)

The Home Office statistics show that, in 2013, there were 1,740 Romanians that claimed social benefits in the UK. In total, the UK got 5.7 million such claims, out of which 7% were from immigrants. Romanians account for 0.03%. 

We spoke to the Metropolitan Police and with Romanian officers that work in London, with several journalists – all of whom had been to Romania to cover this subject – and we also spoke to British people on the streets, asked them what thy feel about Romanian immigrants. 

Most of them were convinced that Romanians fraud the social benefits system. Employers, on the other hand, say there look for Romanian workers because they work hard and take less money. 

We spoke to such Romanians, that are willing to sleep with other 3-4 men in the same room in order to send more money back home, in Romania. We visited an abandoned house in London that had been occupied and turned into a dump by Romanians. But we also found successful Romanians, a barrister, a millionaire, a doctor among them. They have made it their mission to show the Brits that Romania and Romanians are a lor different from the way the media has portrayed them.