ALAN BLANDFORD’S figure of 20,000 Eastern Europeans forming a new wave of immigration into the UK is likely to be a considerable underestimate based on the East European precedent between 2004 and 2011 (Letters July 24).

Like Poland in 2004, Bulgarian and Romanian GDP per head is only about one fifth of that of the UK and both suffer from high youth unemployment. The minimum wage is only about £1 per hour in both countries and access to welfare in the UK is relatively simple, with low wages being topped up by in work benefits.

Taking these and other factors into account Migrationwatch UK estimates that immigration from these two countries will add 50,000 a year to the UK population for the next five years of which about half is likely to be captured in the immigration statistics.

Let us remember that the Labour government relied on studies for estimated East European immigration which turned out to be wrong by a factor of eight. No wonder the present government has been so reluctant to publish any estimate of its own.

As one leading commentator put it: “If Spain can get away with closing its border with Gibraltar, why can’t we close our border to the flood of Bulgarians and Romanians heading our way in a few short months’ time”?

Unless something is done, and soon, to negotiate back control of our own national borders, we face the real prospect of demographic suicide.

Giving up control of immigration policy to the European Union is one more reason for exiting this organisation as soon as the promised referendum affords us the opportunity to do so.

COLIN SMITH, Totton Branch, New Forest East Conservatives.