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		Letter to the Editor Nottingham Evening Post Tuesday 27 August 2002 Dear Sir I seem to have got both Phillip Whitehead MEP and Nick Palmer MP hot under the collar on the question of EU enlargement and immigration (letters, 17 August), so I must be doing something right. Nick Palmer challenges my facts. There are few gypsies in Slovakia, he says. If he refers to the Lonely Planet website he will find that there are 1.5% Roma (gypsy) people out of a population of 5.4 million -- 81,000 declared gypsies. When I was in Bratislava recently I was advised by local people that there is extensive under-reporting and that the true figure is probably much higher. There are at least two million Roma people across central and eastern Europe. Mr. Palmer is right that there will be transitional arrangements on free movement for EU accession states -- but transitional means temporary. Eventually, all these people will be free to live anywhere in the EU. Phillip Whitehead MEP accuses me of "playing the race card", so I hope he won't mind if I in return accuse him of lying. Or to be more charitable, perhaps he is just confused. We face the danger of a new wave of immigration into Britain following the proposed accession of ten new central and eastern European countries to the EU in 2004. Perhaps Phillip doesn't understand that these potential immigrants are white Europeans. So the issue of racism simply cannot arise. East Midlands voters on the doorstep and in the pub are worrying about the immigration issue, and they are frustrated that politicians seem reluctant to talk about it. Yet when I write about it in reasonable and measured terms, the best that Phillip can do is to shout "Racist" from the sidelines, in an attempt to stifle debate. The public deserve better. The immigration debate is not about race, but about numbers, overcrowding, cost, and pressure on housing and public services. It's about time people like Phillip and Nick stopped shouting abuse and started responding to public anxiety. Yours sincerely, Roger Helmer MEP