From my latest VDare piece:

When Poland and seven other former Soviet bloc countries joined the European Union in 2004, Tony Blair’s government assured the British public that the country would not be flooded by job-seeking migrants from the East. At most, ministers asserted—at most—Britain could expect around 15,000 additional immigrants per year.

Not for the first time, a government’s math has proven wildly, grotesquely wrong...

Elsewhere in Europe, ministers struggle to come to grips with the growing wave of illegal immigrants attempting to enter the EU on its southern frontiers. Heather first blogged about it here. Since then, French Interior Minister and 2007 presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has urged fellow EU leaders to agree to a ban on future amnesties. Le Figaro reports (my translation here):

At a speech today in Madrid before an inter-ministerial meeting of the European Union's eight Mediterranean member states, Nicolas Sarkozy will endorse a "ban" on massive regularizations. According to a text made public on the eve of the Madrid meeting, M. Sarkozy will prospose a "future ban on all massive regularizations" as part of the "European pact" on immigration that he supports.

Sarkozy is an astute politican who understands that positionning himself as an advocate of tighter borders makes the best electoral sense. But he is also right: Europe will never get control of its immigration mess as long as individual member states continue to use amnesties as a way of making up for temporary labor shortfalls.