Quotes of the Day

Imrich David can hardly be faulted for wanting to leave Slovakia. Over the past five years, the 44-year-old Romany father of three has lost his job as a welder, seen his children beaten up by right-wing extremists, and been forced by hostile local authorities to give up his apartment in Stós in the eastern part of the country. He's had to move 43 km away to a decaying, crime-ridden housing project in Kosice. A recent cut in welfare payments has left him with a stark choice: pay his rent or feed his family. It is, he says, "impossible to live here."

So David has a plan. When May 1 comes around and Slovakia joins the E.U., he plans to sell his apartment and look for work in Britain. "It's the talk of the community," he says. "People are already lining up buyers for their apartments. Many want to leave." The same goes for other impoverished Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe, where, according to a 2003 United Nations report, people like David face living conditions "closer to those in sub-Saharan Africa than to Europe."

Few studies predict significant migration from new member states to Western Europe, but lack of reliable data makes the Romany population a big unknown. Between 1997 and 2002, Britain received 5,935 applications for asylum from Czechs, the vast majority of them Roma, representing roughly 1.5% of the U.K.'s total asylum applicants. To discourage migrants after May 1, the British government plans to take out ads in Central Europe to dispel the myth that Britain is a job seekers' haven.

So, are fears of a major influx overblown? Claude Cahn, programs director at the European Roma Rights Center, a Budapest-based human-rights group, sees little reason for panic: "Nothing that we've seen indicates a wave of people to Western Europe." Others are not so sure. A 2002 survey of 323 Slovak Roma conducted by the Institute for Public Affairs in Bratislava found that roughly half of respondents are considering emigration after May 1.

Their path will not necessarily be easy, at least not in Britain. Beginning in May, migrants may be required to look for jobs if they want to stay, and access to benefits could be severely restricted — measures expected to narrow the pool of people leaving home to those with marketable skills or families already abroad. None of this fazes David: "They think that since we are Roma, we don't feel like working. But I know how to work and that's what I intend to do."

• JAN STOJASPAL | Prague
• A survey of Slovak Roma indicates half may emigrate after May 1. Time to panic?