"I would assume they do. Just like migrants here, they would have to pay rent out of their earnings. They would not get free accommodation provided by the state, but neither do migrant workers coming to our shores."
Many migrants from the EU take low paid low skilled jobs (the sort of work people already here will not get out of bed for). Tell me, Gromit, how somebody earning the minimum wage can afford to pay the going rate in rent without considerable support in the form of benefits (working tax credit, housing benefit and possibly child tax credit and child allowance). I provided a very quick calculation in response to another question at 22:21 yesterday:
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/News/Question1374201-2.html
The vast majority of migrants from the EU are in low paid work and need to be heavily subsidised to be able to live here. Meantime we are providing 100% subsidy to those already here who will not do this low pay work because they'd rather stay at home. It's utter madness and there is no overall benefit to the UK whatsoever. DTC and Mikey have both identified this. Cornwall is a classic example where people there moan and groan about their lot, there are areas of high unemployment and so-called "deprivation" but every hotel you stay in in that county (and indeed just about everywhere else) is staffed predominantly by eastern Europeans.
As for the benefits of reciprocal arrangements, they may well be fine for people in professional or skilled occupations, but who is going to move to Poland to dig up beetroots for £1 an hour (and not be the beneficiaries of the sort of support Poles enjoy here into the bargain)?
I don't want to be accused of hypocrisy so here's my take on the EU. I believe it has now exceeded its remit and is causing more problems that it is ever likely to solve. I would like the UK to leave forthwith. I don't mean that the UK should cease trading with other EU nations. It did before the EU existed and many other nations manage to do so now quite successfully. I don't mind not having the automatic right of abode elsewhere in Europe and I don't mind having to present a passport (which I have to do anyway) and possibly obtain a visa to visit mainland Europe. I don't mind having to change my pounds into euros when I visit (a small price to pay to see the UK in control of its own currency). In short, I would like nations in the EU to be just as "foreign" as those outside. Our trade with them will still continue but we will be free to develop new markets (which may be growing, not suffering seemingly terminal decline) to suit ourselves. And I want all these things to apply in reverse as well.