Would ilish machher jhol taste just as good if it was prepared by a cook from Krakow? Or, Chinese chop suey made by a chef from Cyprus? If you are in the UK today, that’s probably what you will get. Indian restaurants in the UK need at least 20,000 workers a year. The Chinese require a similar number. They have been told to employ east Europeans instead.

It’s not 9/11 and the London underground bombings that have made people from Asia persona non grata in the UK job market. A bigger reason is the enlargement of the European Union in the spring of 2004.

The new entrants were the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Under the Accession Workers’ Registration Scheme, as many as 2,50,000 had registered till June 2005. Move aside India and Pakistan; you don’t stand a chance when there are Europeans who want your jobs. “The accession countries appear the most popular source of migrant worker recruitment among employers at present,” says the latest Labour Market Outlook survey published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).

It is not just the UK. In ‘egalitarian’ France too, the recent riots have shown deep racial divides. And, if anything at all, it is worse in countries like Germany.

Consider another statistic, somewhat contradictory to the East European influx. Of the around 30,000 UK work permits granted to foreign computer experts, more than 80 per cent (24,764) went to Indians.

There is no contradiction in these trends. The UK, like many other western countries, is ready to welcome specialised talent with open arms. Only when it comes to the unskilled labour do they raise the drawbridge.

Want another example? Take au pairs, defined by the UK immigration rules as single persons between 17 and 27 years of age who come to the UK to learn English. You can qualify as an au pair if you are from Andorra, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Macedonia, Monaco, Romania, San Marino, Turkey, the European Economic Area and Switzerland. If you are an Indian, you can qualify as a domestic worker in a private household, and only if you accompany your employer to the UK.

Put in a nutshell, you are welcome in the UK if you are an expert in your trade, or, if there is a shortage. Nurses are in huge demand today. IT experts are landing in Heathrow in droves, though there are more than 30,000 UK IT professionals currently on the bench.

The new changes proposed in the UK immigration laws will make things even more difficult for those at the bottom of the ladder. For those higher up, everyone seems to be working to make things easier.

Cut to another illustration. The Indian media has been making a lot of noise over how it is racism that is thwarting L.N. Mittal’s bid for Arcelor. Aren’t we equally ‘racist’ when we ignore the huge India workforce in West Asia while we roll out the red carpet for the well-heeled at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas?