Apr 30, 2008, 16:12 GMT
London - Piotr Robinski was hailed in Britain as a trendsetter.
The 40-year-old Polish doctor from Poznan would lock up his surgery on Friday and catch a cheap flight to Britain to supplement the family income by providing out-of-hours care for patients of the National Health Service.
Robinski, who earned an average of 80 pounds (160 dollars) an hour visiting patients in Glasgow, Scotland, told the Guardian he would have had to take on a second job in Poland to survive financially.
'But for me it's just like taking a bus to work now,' he said about the budget flights that made his weekend trips possible.
Passenger numbers from Polish airports to Britain stood at 385,000 in 2007, compared with 40,000 in 2004.
But the wave of migration, sparked by cheap travel and the economic lure, that saw up to a million east Europeans come to Britain in the wake of EU expansion in 2004, is now turning, research by a British think-tank has shown.
More than half of the migrants, most of whom are from Poland, have returned home, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said.
Four in 10 of the Polish migrants who decided to return home said they believed that 'better employment prospects in Poland will encourage Poles to return for good.'
Apart from personal reasons, such as wanting to be with their families and friends, the returnees said the economic slowdown in Britain and the sharp decline in the value of the pound had contributed to their decision.
According to the IPPR, the pound has fallen by around a quarter relative to the Polish zloty since early 2004.
Experts estimate that up to to 70 per cent of Polish migrants would return home if the exchange rate deteriorated further.
Additionally, as other EU members were lifting their initial restrictions on migration from eastern Europe, Britain would cease to be a prime target for migration.
IPPR figures confirmed that Poles were now the largest foreign national group in Britain, replacing people born in India, many of whom had acquired British citizenship.
The Polish labour force, the report said, had settled across Britain, ranging from tour guides in the whisky industry in Scotland to the proverbial Polish plumber in London or the fruit picker on farms in east Anglia, in the south-east.
Analysts predicted that the anti-migrant tone in sections of the media, and complaints from local authorities about the migrants' impact on schooling and social services, would soon give way to concerns about how Britain would cope without the extra labour.
'That tap of Polish workers is going to run dry. I fear that policymakers haven't quite grasped the immense challenge that might bring because if the Poles don't do the jobs, who will?' asked Danny Sriskandarajah, the IPPR's director.
The problem would be especially acute in the building industry, but an exodus of plumbers and carpenters would also have a negative impact on major infrastructure projects linked to major sporting events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
The influx of east European migrants had allowed Britain to 'paper over' fundamental problems in the labour market, 'particularly a lack of skilled workers,' a migration expert said.
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