Crime Rates Up in Britain, Down in Romania

A quote from The Daily Mail, 19 September 2007

The influx of Romanian migrants has led to an explosion in crime in this country, it emerged last night. As recent members of the EU, Romanians have had free access to Britain only since January 1. Yet in the first six months of this year, police say, they were responsible for 1,080 offences. Police believe some migrants from Romania are running organised criminal gangs. During the same period in 2006, only 135 such crimes were recorded. In an ironic twist Romanian authorities say crime there is dropping, fuelling suspicions that some offenders may have moved here. […]

Stan Bitlan, head of the police force in Ialomita County, Romania, said: “Yes there is a connection between what is happening here and the UK. What they are doing in the UK appears here in Romania in the form of luxury cars and houses.” […] Vasile Save, the mayor of Tandarei – a town that has seen 800 inhabitants leave in the first six months of this year – admits there is less crime in the area. […]

The leaked Home Office memo said an estimated 45,000 potential criminals from Romania and Bulgaria – which also joined in January this year – would travel to Britain following EU expansion. […] Previously, they could be identified and barred from entering Britain through the checks required to obtain a visa. As EU citizens, however, the only requirement is to produce a valid passport on entry – making them harder to spot.

 
Another quote from The Daily Mail, 19 September 2007

A Chief constable has ignited a new race debate in Britain by warning that more police officers are needed to deal with traffic offences and crimes such as prostitution caused by an influx of East European migrants. Cambridgeshire chief constable Julie Spence says the increase in migrants has left her force struggling to cope […] “We now deal with people from many different countries, speaking more than 90 different languages. While the economic benefits of growth are clear we need to maintain the basic public services infrastructure which means increasing the number of officers we have.”

“When they arrive they think they can do the same thing as in the country they have come from,” she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. “There were a lot of people who... because they used to carry knives for protection, they think they can carry knives here.” […] Migrants got into difficulties because they were unfamiliar with traffic laws, but police had also noticed a growth in prostitution, driven by the influx of large numbers of single men.

This article is the kind of

This article is the kind of bullshit incitement that annoys me to no end. I remember in the early 90's when there were occasional
flares of anti-gypsy violence in Romania (regrettable as they were),
the 'Western media' (a mythical creature not entirely different from the 'Arab street') were up in arms about Romanians discriminating their minorities.

Now these guys move to the West, and give it a taste of their behavior, and the same 'Western media' calls the Romanians criminals.
I'm not saying there aren't bad Romanians out there - by all means, throw their ass in jail and let them rot there, cane them, gypsy or not gypsy.

What escapes me here is the connection between 'Romanian' and 'criminal', the article seems to be implying there is a link. Should I assume that, were I to enter the UK with my Romanian passport, I should be scrutinized thoroughlly as a risk, whereas, should I enter it with my American passport, I should be waved through?

Romania should raise the living standard of its population, gypsy and native alike. If it had the resources, if it was better managed, I'm sure it would, and it will, in due time. However, at a time when Western culture needs all the support it can muster as it is under attack from immigration from thoroughly incompatible cultures, shouldn't Western Europe perhaps try to deal with Eastern Europeans in a more accommodating manner, other than whipping the public into a frenzy against people who, after all, have a solid Christian cultural background?
Yeah there are bad Romanians, there are bad gypsies from Romania, but also there are doctors, software engineers,
and so on. Are these guys featured anywhere?

Perhaps Britons should be banned from buying villas
on the Black Sea since they are all, you know, louts, chavs, and drunks.

This is media manipulation,

This is media manipulation, perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps not. First of all majority of those criminals aren't Romanians but Gypsies. Secondary they publish a photo of folks who are looking for job which is plain stupid, criminals don't search for legal job.