VICTOR SPIRESAU (pictured, on the right, at Luton airport) had the strange honour of being the first Romanian immigrant to land in Britain on January 1st, the day restrictions on migrant labour from Romania and Bulgaria were relaxed. Citizens of those countries are now allowed to come and work in Britain on the same basis as citizens of other EU countries. Mr Spiresau, who works in construction, said he did not want to “rob” Britain, just make enough money to go home with a nest-egg for his family.
The question haunting Britain’s increasingly agitated debate about immigration is whether characters like Mr Spiresau will define the political narrative of immigration in 2014—or whether a new tranche of arrivals from poorer parts of the old eastern bloc will end up as a drain on the welfare system and public services.
The prime minister, David Cameron, has been under pressure from his Conservative party and beyond to clamp down on welfare entitlements for these newcomers, and has pledged to lengthen the amount of time they must wait before they are able to make a claim on state funds. Statistics suggest that this move may be more sound and fury than practical necessity, though. Just under 2% of people who have arrived in Britain from EU countries since 2010 have claimed unemployment benefit, according to the Labour Force Survey.
Indeed, far from draining the welfare state, the new migrants are likely to boost British coffers. Several recent reports have concluded that migrants pay more in taxes than they took out in welfare payments, because they are mainly young and keen to find work.
Yet Britain does suffer from an anomaly in its welfare set-up, which is likely to trouble Mr Cameron in his political battle with UKIP (an anti-immigration party), his own party’s right-wing and public opinion. Entitlements to claim basic benefits in Britain are relatively generous to newcomers because the social security system is based on means-testing, rather than the contributory principles common in other European countries, which take into account whether a claimant has previously worked and paid into the system.
More inconsistencies arise in practice. Italy, for example, does not offer a “safety net” of benefits that would enable newcomers to claim quickly. In fact, cumbersome bureaucracies and scant entitlements to housing assistance usually deter migrants from claiming very much at all. Spain also curtails access to benefits for those who have not worked unless they can prove extreme hardship. And few Britons would hope to get much out of the Romanian and Bulgarian social security systems, which are poorly administered and frankly impoverished.
Alas for Mr Cameron, changing entitlements is complicated and likely to put him on a collision course with the European Commission and the European Court of Justice. One approach mooted by Open Europe, a think-tank, would be for the British government to garner support for the right to vary welfare payments for newly arrived immigrants. Germany and the Netherlands have signalled sympathy on this point, though the make-up of a new grand coalition in Berlin may not help the case for reform. 
In truth, though, Britain’s welfare system, designed for an era of much less labour mobility, is unlikely to be greatly strained by a new wave of incomers. But the lack of reciprocity between its set-up and that of other European countries is a reasonable concern, even if the amount of money at stake is modest. Mr Cameron must therefore hope that the majority of migrants who choose Britain as their destination in 2014 are as intent on working as Mr Spiresau.