Wales is Getting a Little Too Lithuanian
Last month, I wrote about the massive influx of Poles, Lithuanian and Latvian workers into Ireland, Britain and Sweden (and its impact on the burgeoning Irish sex trade). Like illegal Mexicans coming into the US, the workers are generally doing jobs the locals won’t. Unlike the Mexicans, this immigration is legal.
As Gridskipper reports, the director of a Welsh government tourism office is worried that Wales is getting less and less Welsh:
“I’m concerned, and there’s concern among some English rural regions and in Wales and Scotland, that there’s a dilution of what we consider our national tourism product’, he said. ‘It almost sounds racist, but it’s not meant to be. We have to retain things that make our tourism distinctive, whether it’s Welshness, Scottishness or Irishness…I don’t believe that if you bring someone from Poland, Lithuania or the accession countries that you can deliver a distinctively Welsh experience.”
He goes on to mention the immigrants’ impact on the Welsh language, whose re-introduction (or, maybe, repopularization) has been a real success story.
I guess the government needs to contract a bunch of acting schools to teach the Lithuanians some Welsh and Scottish accents.
