Increasing the appeal of home, wages in eastern Europe have soared: Polish corporate sector wages were up 12.6 percent in April from a year before, partly because of tighter supply due to migration.
East Europeans can still earn much more in a mature economy such as Britain than they can back home, but that advantage fades when the higher cost of living in Britain is considered.
"I went to London hoping to save up some money. I had a great time but never managed to save a penny," said Marcin Kikut, 27, who now teaches English in Warsaw after returning from London a few months ago.
"When I got back to Warsaw I was offered three jobs almost straight away. But it is perhaps not so easy to find work in some smaller towns. I have a Polish friend still in London who wants to return but is scared he won't find a job here."
Many Poles left for Britain when unemployment in Poland ran at about 20 percent. It is now 10.5 percent.
STAY OR GO
But cultural and personal factors also weigh. In Edinburgh, Tomek, a night-club bouncer who declined to give his surname to protect his reputation when he returns, said he plans to go back soon: "I will always be an alien here (in Britain). I like my world. It is poorer but it is mine.
"I can't say it is bad here, but I can have the same standard of living in Poland."
Like other east Europeans, Poles complain of having to do menial jobs in the West far below their abilities or education.
"I will never regret my year in London... but (from a career point of view) it was a waste of time," said Miroslava Mozolova, 25, a Slovak who toiled in sandwich chain Pret-a-Manger but is now a quality coordinator at a budget airline in Bratislava.
Despite such complaints and the shifting economic balances, plenty of other east Europeans in Britain plan to stay put, at least for now. Many have married local people, bought property and have good jobs they don't want to give up.
Joanna Majkrzak runs a pub in Edinburgh, near to four Polish shops, with her Irish partner.
"I think those who came here strictly for the money are now gone," she said. "They left their families in Poland and now they have been reunited. But many Poles stay and get promoted. They become pub managers or managers of cleaning businesses."
Dembinski of the British-Polish Chamber of Commerce said certain groups such as entrepreneurs and doctors were especially unlikely to return: "It is still much easier to set up a business in Britain than in Poland, where red tape is still very bad. It is also easier to pay tax, to hire and fire."
Highly skilled professionals such as doctors can still earn around six times more in Britain than in Poland, he added.
TURNSTILES
Unfortunately for Britons who have grown accustomed to being able to find affordable good Polish plumbers, Slovak nannies or Lithuanian car mechanics over the past few years, east Europeans have far more options now than in 2004.
The few EU states still restricting workers from the 2004 entrants, such as Germany, will have to open up fully by 2011. Some non-EU countries such as Norway, also battling labour shortages, have already opened up to east European workers.
Poland's business newspaper Parkiet recently quoted the head of a local consulting company as saying many Poles leaving Britain were in fact heading to Norway, not Poland, because salaries were twice as high there as in Britain.
Dembinski noted that the 700 or so weekly flights between Poland and Britain were generally full in both directions.
"Around 29,000 Poles registered for work in Britain in the first quarter of 2008. That is down 17 percent from the previous year but still adds up to more than 100,000 people over the year, though many will not necessarily stay long," he said.
Some "commute" across borders, juggling two jobs.
"You can fly from Warsaw to, say, Nottingham with a low-cost airline in less time than it takes to drive 350 km (200 miles) to Gdansk," noted one Warsaw-based EU diplomat.
"A few people find it worth their while financially to work part of the week in one place and the rest back at home."
