Britain could link citizenship to benefits for the first time as part of a plan to cut the millions of pounds paid to immigrants from eastern Europe.

Immigrants would not receive a passport until they had lived in the country for several years under the new plan, and during this "probationary period" they would not be allowed to claim the full range of welfare handouts such as child benefit and income support.

Polish families are currently claiming more than £20 million a year for thousands of children who remain in their homeland.

They get a better deal in Britain than in their own country, where payments are means tested.

Under European regulations, migrant workers living in Britain are entitled to full family benefits - even if their dependants stay behind.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced a Whitehall review only to see if these rules could be tightened up. However, it would require a new deal among the 27 European Union countries.

The review forms part of a wider range of reforms to immigration rules and citizenship rights.

A Green Paper published by the Home Office yesterday said that new arrivals from outside the EU would be required to pay more for their visas to meet some of the costs to public services.

However, this is expected to raise only "tens of millions" when local councils say they are hundreds of millions in the red due to immigration.

The paper also set out a system of "earned" citizenship whereby immigrants wanting to become British would serve a probationary period before being granted a passport. During this period of between one and three years they would not have full access to benefits.

Under the plans it would normally take an immigrant six years in total to obtain a passport if they performed good works, spoke English or were involved in voluntary work. They would have their applications delayed or blocked altogether if they behaved anti-socially.

Popular Alliance Comment:

Whilst we welcome any attempt that this government pursues to control immigration and the cost of the benefits paid to them it does raise some other concerns.

This Labour government has presided over the most uncontrolled period of immigration in living memory due to the failure of both its policies and delivery of them.

Most immigration is now from within Europe. We may well not be able to control this aspect of welfare as the EU might block it. Therefore immigration and the cost in benefits etc will continue as currently.

For every non-EU immigrant deterred by the new process we suspect that all it will do is shift to an EU immigrant.

The normal way of doing this is by countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy giving amnesties to millions of non EU illegal immigrants who in term become EU citizens, they then wait two years and head straight for soft touch Britain, quite simple really.

The easy and less costly way would be to restrict the number of immigrants coming from with in the EU. This of course will not happen as our government is scared to death of upsetting their masters and rulers in Brussels.

In the article written HERE, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced a Whitehall review only to see if these rules could be tightened up. However, it would require a new deal among the 27 European Union countries.

Yet in the same report it states “They get a better deal in Britain than in their own country, where payments are means tested.”

We have to wonder why incompetent Smith needs to to say that to tighten rules requires a new deal between the 27 member states yet the Polish and Eastern EU countries make it very difficult to claim benefits under existing rules by means testing them ?.

The Popular Alliance along with any sane person reading this story knows the labour government is not serious about immigration and all these new “initiatives” are just a smoke screens.

They also make the mistake in thinking the British electorate are gullible fools, unfortunately for them, we know different.