Politicians and media who gathered at airports on New Year’s Day waiting for Romanian and Bulgarian migrants have been mocked by the country’s ambassador to Britain.
Ion Jinga compared them to characters in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot play in which two men wait endlessly for someone called Godot.
Writing for The Huffington Post a day after restrictions on migrants from Romania and Bulgaria working in Britain were lifted, Jinga said: “It seems that a new version of Waiting for Godot is being reinvented by part of the British media and by some politicians who are desperately waiting for the arrival of millions of Romanians after 1 January 2014.
“Journalists and distinguished British MPs who went to Luton airport on the 1 January... discovered that only two Romanians came to the UK to take advantage of the lifting of border restrictions, and both having firm job offers - one washing cars, the other as a doctor in Essex.
The overwhelming majority of the passengers were Romanians returning to jobs after having enjoyed Christmas with their families at home, or Britons coming home after skiing in the Carpathians.”
The article was later amended to remove mention of politicians.
Yesterday Border Force guards swooped on a group of Romanian migrants sleeping rough close to London’s Marble Arch. Among them was a woman who claimed she had moved to Britain in order to claim free hospital treatment on the NHS.
The group were detained, finger printed and photographed, before being driven away in three Home Office vans.
