As the official figures flashed up on a giant television screen, Tommy Tomescu allowed himself a brief smile of vindication before the recriminations flowed.

The fall in the numbers of Romanian and Bulgarians working in the UK is "no surprise at all", says the Romanian dentist who has become a London MEP candidate for the Europeans party, which campaigns for migrant workers' rights and an "end to scapegoating in the UK".

At a press conference convened at Cornelius's Romanian-Italian restaurant in Tottenham Hale, north London, he questioned the actions of Ukip candidates "scapegoating" immigrants. He suggested those Ukip members should resign.

Tomescu says the community also wants an apology from Migration Watch, which predicted that immigration from Romania and Bulgaria would add 50,000 to the UK population annually.

Others agree that the onslaught of negative publicity in Britain could have deterred some.

"I think it is possible," says Larisa Stanciu, 24, a nurse from Craiova, southern Romania. She, and her friend Stela Ciobanu, 24, also a nurse, are working as hotel cleaners in London. Unable to get nursing jobs at home, they decided that cleaning, in Britain, was better paid and preferable until their English improved and allowed them to apply for better jobs, possibly again in nursing.

Ciobanu arrived in January because the lifting of the restrictions made it more straightforward to obtain a national insurance number.

Tomescu says: "Many of those now registered as working were already here and applied for their national insurance numbers after 1 January knowing it was now not mandatory to be self employed. Anyone who wanted to come to the UK [was] already here."

Violeta Patrascu was one of those who ignored the negative media and political comment and came to the UK in November. Since then, she says, she has found British people to be "really very polite and helpful".

At 49, she was older than most economic migrants. She came alone, leaving her 15-year-old daughter and retired naval commander husband back home in the Black Sea port of Constanta, to realise her dreams and those of her family.

Having run her own driving school, she joined the Bill Plant national driving school and is putting clients through driving tests in London.

A graduate in philology, the study of historical texts, she says she is aiming to earn enough to bring her daughter to the UK to attend college, as well as her husband. "Yes I am a little bit scared. I left my house. I left my country. It is hard for me. I am a little bit older," she says. "But I did not want to stay in Romania. I have some dreams. These dreams are for myself and for my daughter, because she is very gifted artistically. And I feel my heart is here now. Here is my home."

Ultimately, she wants to run a business as a motivational speaker and lifestyle coach; she planned to study marketing, too.

"Of course, I will work at the same time, because I have to, for money," she said. "That hysteria before 1 January, when the media here in England said a lot of Romanians would come to take money. Well, I came here to work. And to study."

Claudia Cirlig, 37, is another whose journey, from Romania to Oxford, was included in the latest figures. Having studied at Warwick University two years ago, she returned to set up a theatre project, entitled Tales Told in Romanian, bringing Romanian theatre to London at the Leicester Square Theatre and also to Dublin.

She was drawn to the UK, she says, because she felt that British society was very open. "I feel accepted. I live in a shared house in Oxford, and we got a Ukip flyer. My housemate just threw it away. Except for this, honestly, I think the society is very nice and welcoming."

• This article was amended on 15 May 2014. The earlier version said Migration Watch had "predicted that 500,000 people [from Romania and Bulgaria] would arrive in the UK annually".