The wave of migration from Eastern Europe is a two way process with cheap workers coming into the UK, while taxpayers cash flows out.  This is one of the largest 'milking of the benefits' system ever witnessed.  In both cases Britons are losing out in a big way.

Tens of thousands of Eastern European migrants living in Britain are exploiting a loophole in the law to claim UK child benefit for children that they have left behind.

Migrant workers from new EU member states including the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Lithuania, are signing up in droves for the cash, funded by British taxpayers.

But it is the massive flood of Polish migrants who are taking native taxpayers for a ride.  

In Poland, parents do not have an automatic right to state benefits for their children, and even those payments which are available are strictly means-tested, and very few people qualify.

But under EU rules, Polish and other Eastern European parents working in Britain can leave their children in their home country and still qualify for UK money - £907.40 a year for a single child and £608.40 for each additional one.  According to the Mail on Sunday  more than 50,000 Poles have already applied for the handouts this year, which, even if they claim for only one child, the Polish applications alone will already have cost the taxpayer £45million this year.

£45million could pay for about 1500 front line police officers, or about 2000 nurses on the ward.

Parents abandoning children

A Mail on Sunday investigation also found that heartless Polish parents were dumping their children in state orphanages, or with relatives, in order to take up jobs in the UK.

State officials in Poland say that the weight of applications for UK child benefit has left the claims agency facing collapse.

"There are so many to deal with.  In some cases whole villages have left to go and work abroad," said Beata Trybowska, of the Krakow branch of the agency responsible for processing the applications.

In Krakow alone, which has lower rates of emigration than many other parts of Poland, figures show that in 2004 - when Poland joined the EU with seven other former Eastern Bloc states - only 100 child benefit claims were made.

Last year, the number had jumped to 1,800 and in the first half of 2006 it was already more than 2,200.  Official records put the number of Poles who have registered to live and work in Britain at 230,000.  But the true figure is possibly closer to a million.

Last night, a spokeswoman for HM Revenue and Customs confirmed that Eastern European nationals could claim child benefit.  She said that under EU rules it was classified an 'exportable benefit'.

With a further 300,000 migrant workers expected to be pouring into the UK next year from Romania and Bulgaria, just how much longer are British taxpayers going to suffer in silence?

We are being dramatically fleeced, thanks to the inability of Blair’s regime to deal with immigration and our continued membership of the EU.