Poland used to be one of the world’s most ethnically homogenous countries. That’s no longer the case. <br>WARSAW — In a 1989 Polish movie, “300 Miles to Heaven,” two brothers stow away to Sweden underneath a truck.<br>More than three decades later, people are risking their lives to get <em>into</em> Poland.<br>Saad, an Iraqi national who only gave his first name since he’s awaiting a government decision granting him protection and wants to stay “below the radar,” is a 36-year-old pharmacist.<br>He made it through the thick bogs and forests on the Polish-Belarusian border three years ago, just as migration was becoming a top political issue in Poland.<br>Historically a nation of emigrants, Poland is starting to pull in growing numbers of immigrants — ranging from asylum-seekers like Saad to millions of Ukrainian refugees escaping the war, to hundreds of thousands of people from across the world looking to benefit from its fast-growing economy. That demographic change in what was, until very recently, one of Europe’s most ethnically homogenous countries, is having a political impact.<br>“Ten years ago we had 100,000 migrants in Poland, today it’s 2.5 million people. We need to think about whether we are undermining social cohesion. It seems to me that this number is currently the borderline,” Maciej Duszczyk, the deputy interior minister, <a href="https://www.pap.pl/aktualnosci/polska-popelni-bledy-innych-panstw-obecna-liczba-migrantow-jest-graniczna" target="_blank">told</a> Poland’s TVN television last year.<br>He was speaking as the government of PM Donald Tusk put forward its new migration policy until 2030, entitled: “Regaining control, ensuring safety.”<br>The politics surrounding migration will only get more intense. Poles elect their new president in May, and the issue is a top concern. <br>Tusk has moved to clamp down on asylum-seekers like Saad — following in the footsteps of his predecessors from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.<br>“We are facing a hybrid — and increasingly intense — war on the Polish border,” Tusk said.<br>Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, has encouraged people wanting to enter the EU to fly to Minsk and then cross illegally into Poland — a scheme that Polish governments as well as the EU have denounced as a bid to destabilize them.<br>“I’m Iraqi but I was living in Turkey when I heard you could travel to Poland and try applying for international protection there. I paid some money and they flew us to Minsk and then they took us to the border. It was September 2021,” said Saad, speaking at a Warsaw café.<br>Polish border guards try to force asylum seekers back into Belarus — earning them condemnation from human rights groups. Saad said he was “pushed back a few times. The last time I injured my leg and was lucky to end up in a hospital where I was asked if I wanted to apply for protection.” <br>The growing number of newcomers is causing fears that they won’t easily integrate into Polish society.<br>After <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/magdeburg-christmas-market-attack-europe-far-right-elon-musk/">an attack on a Christmas fair</a> in the German town of Magdeburg by a Saudi immigrant who espoused far-right views, Tusk called for a clear declaration from President Andrzej Duda and the opposition PiS “about supporting the government’s package tightening visa and asylum laws.”<br>“The state is regaining control over borders and migration after years of chaos and corruption, so at least do not interfere,” Tusk said, referring to allegations that a <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-visas-for-cash-scandal-anti-immigrant-government-slammed/">visas-for-bribes scheme</a> under the previous PiS government had let in hundreds of thousands of people from Africa, Latin America and Muslim countries.<br>PiS says Tusk’s efforts are misguided.<br>“It’s the EU’s migration pact that is a problem and suspending asylum laws doesn’t do much to address it,” former PiS Deputy Prime Minister Mariusz Błaszczak told POLITICO.<br>“The migration pact aims to facilitate further waves of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. It’s not a solution to the problem but rather a way of making it worse, and Prime Minister Tusk has done nothing about it.”<br>According to estimates, some 2.5 million to 2.8 million immigrants live in Poland, or from 6.6 percent to 7.5 percent of a population of 37.5 million people. That’s a seismic change from the not-too-distant past: After World War II, which saw most Polish Jews murdered by Germany and minorities ethically cleansed by the Soviets, ethnic Poles made up over 98 percent of the population.<br>Today about three-quarters of immigrants are Ukrainians, who had been coming to Poland in large numbers even before Russia attacked their country three years ago — attracted both by jobs and by cultural and linguistic ties.<br>“It’s so much easier here. If you could survive Ukraine, Poland feels as if you were on vacation,” said Yuriy Bilichenko, who runs a small but successful automotive business in Grudziądz, a town of 100,000 in northern Poland. <br>“You don’t have to pay bribes for everything and anything you want to do here. I know Poles like to complain about their health-care services, but the last time I was in Ukraine a few years ago I had to buy all the basic stuff I needed out of my own pocket.”<br>Migrants from much farther away are also arriving in ever-larger numbers.<br>The big draw is <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPD@WEO/POL?zoom=POL&highlight=POL" target="_blank">the country’s economy</a> — Poland’s GDP is 2.4 times larger than it was in 2004, the year it joined the EU, and an astonishing 12 times larger than in 1989, the year communist rule ended. Its GDP is <a href="https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/economic-forecast-and-surveys/economic-forecasts/autumn-2024-economic-forecast-gradual-rebound-adverse-environment_en" target="_blank">forecast</a> to grow by 3.6 percent this year, one of the highest rates in the EU.<br>The influx is causing tension among Poles, with 42 percent saying their country should shut the door on arrivals, a June poll <a href="https://katowice.wyborcza.pl/katowice/7,35063,31069931,uchodzca-niemile-widziany-chyba-ze-bylby-naszym-lekarzem-sasiadem.html" target="_blank">showed</a>. Only 14 percent would welcome migrants from all over the world, while 35 percent were sympathetic only toward migrants from Belarus and Ukraine.<br>While PiS has long publicly denounced large-scale migration, the current anti-migration stance of Tusk and his centrist Civic Coalition party is a major change of tack.<br>While in opposition, some Civic Coalition MPs visited the Belarusian border to hand out food and blankets to migrants <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/afghanistan-refugees-europe-poland-belarus-migration-crisis/">stranded</a> in no-man’s land between the two countries. Tusk himself called migrants “poor people seeking their place on Earth.”<br>Now, the Tusk government is continuing the PiS policy of building a fortified barrier along the Polish-Belarusian border, which has environmentalists up in arms due to the destruction it causes to protected natural areas.<br>But in a country worried about security and migration, the political consequences of a lax border policy can be severe.<br>“If we can prevent an attack by Russia and Belarus, it’s the price that we have to pay, I think,”<a href="https://www.polsatnews.pl/wiadomosc/2024-12-14/dewastacja-na-brzegu-bugu-wiceminister-pewne-koszty-nalezy-poniesc/" target="_blank">said</a> Duszczyk, the deputy minister.<br>The motivations of the newcomers are extremely diverse.<br>Shalot (who asked that her last name not be used) first arrived in Poland in mid-2022 from rural Uganda, where she faced <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/04/uganda-court-upholds-anti-homosexuality-act" target="_blank">criminal charges</a> for being a lesbian. She spent a few months in Sweden, where she suffered abuse. She was deported back to Poland after her Polish work visa expired.<br>When POLITICO met Shalot, 24, at a Warsaw mall in late October, she was awaiting a review of her international protection application. The news of the government’s plans to overhaul the migration rules terrified her.<br>“I’m scared to death about having to go back to Uganda,” she said.<br>By December her application had been approved, and she was determined to stay in Poland.<br>“I feel good about my protection and I feel my life is safe. If there aren’t any changes, I’m going to stay in Poland and wait until I’m eligible to become a citizen,” she said.<br>The government’s new migration strategy has NGOs distraught that it is trampling on human rights for political gain.<br>Human rights organizations are disappointed with Tusk and his government, which they supported in the hope it would end scaremongering on migration. Instead, the government has stepped up its anti-migration rhetoric and actions, said Magdalena Nazimek, an expert at Migration Consortium, a Warsaw-based NGO.<br>“It’s easier to play on fear of migration rather than do something positive about it, since scaremongering pays off politically much faster. A war next door also helps in that respect,” Nazimek said.<br>“The government’s migration strategy is exactly that: a narrative based on fear, depicting migrants as evil — except when they can be used as cheap labor.”<br>The government’s strategy does admit that Poland will need more people. The country has a fertility rate of 1.16 children per woman — one of the lowest in Europe. Deaths outnumber births, and the population is projected to fall to under 20 million by the end of the century.<br>That could undermine Poland’s long-running economic miracle. But with the presidential campaign <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-warsaw-mayor-rafal-trzaskowski-wins-donald-tusk-party-presidential-primary/">picking up steam</a>, macroeconomic considerations seem likely to give way to attempts by political parties to outdo one another on clamping down on migration.<br>The two lead candidates are sparring over who has the ear of ordinary Poles.<br>May’s vote on Poland’s next head of state looms large over the country’s six-month EU presidency.<br>The 2025 election will be a make-or-break moment for the government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. <br>Trzaskowski will likely go up against a candidate from the former ruling party, Law and Justice, now in opposition.<br><br><a href="https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiswFBVV95cUxPNGlTRUxDUVZlT09lS0tOR2lvTEQ5VUFybFV4RVpwUTZBOVdqWjhBbTNBZDlZWWx0aVJXMTVWb3d0UmpmQ1RKRldfRDNiZW9TeFN2bFdnNV9zc0UyLWtEMGNwbkhKSUt5djFVUVdoUU5Ud2ZNbDNDVlVxdW9NQW9wOHJIdFZMa1RqUlhENE5ydXBDY2x6VDJ2Z0lpbmM2X2V3UHJYbGdTVXVqbmtac0dMSWxDbw?oc=5">source</a>
