Rhetoric vs Reality on Immigration

Both Polish and British governments talk tough on immigration whilst quietly ushering record numbers into their countries

The Polish and British governments dealings with immigration have come in for sharp focus recently, with both Law and Justice (PiS) and the Conservative Party largely appeasing their voter base by pushing back against specific highly publicised forms of immigration.

Responding to the murder of Polish woman Anastazja Rubińska at the hands of a Bangladeshi man in Greece earlier in June, Polish PM Mateusz Morawiecki said: “Every day, we receive very unsettling news from various countries in Western Europe about crimes, shootings, and macabre events.”

“We also hear about bombings and shootings, for example, in Sweden, a country with a population roughly four times smaller than Poland... almost every other day there is either a shooting, gang warfare, or some form of bombing,” the Prime Minister went on to say.

“We hear about terrible crimes in other parts of Western Europe as well. Let us ask ourselves why this is happening. It is happening because we are dealing with uncontrolled migration, which is simultaneously associated with an increase in criminal activities,” he concluded.

The PM’s assessment is unquestionably accurate and yet his government’s recently revealed immigration policy, whilst not uncontrolled, can only lead to similar consequences due to the demography of who is being and going to be imported.

PiS’ decision to ramp up the importation of third world immigrants to Poland has gone under the radar to date.

According to the Regulatory Impact Assessment (OSR), annually, a minimum of 400,000 will take advantage of the government’s new policy of making Visas easier to gain for citizens from the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, UAE), the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia), Asia (Pakistan, India, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam), as well as Nigeria and Moldova.

This is apparently to fill skilled and semi-skilled manual labour positions (for no doubt a fraction of the wages a Pole would expect to earn) so the immigrants from the aforementioned countries are going to be almost exclusively young to middle aged men.

Stara Biała - just the beginning

In a scaled down precursor to this reported importation of 400,000 predominantly foreign men, state owned company Orlen has begun construction of a Petrochemical complex in central Poland. The contractors enlisted are Pakistanis, Filipinos, Turks, Koreans. In total, about 10,000 people will work on the site.

Again, due to the nature of work, virtually all employees will be male and will live in a commune in Stara Biała, which has a population of 12,000. It bears repeating; 10,000 unaccompanied working aged men from cultures vastly different to Poland’s will arrive in a city of 12,000.

The government has in effect thrown up a smoke screen to policies which would presumably be poorly received by many of their voters. The ruling party recently went into overdrive with its anti-immigration rhetoric and also passed a resolution opposing an EU plan to relocate migrants and asylum seekers within the bloc.

To emphasise the point, party leader Jarosław Kaczyński announced they would organise a national referendum to give Poles a say on the EU plan.

The Tories’ approach to immigration

The Conservative Party in Britain, whilst further down the path than their counterparts to the east, follows a similar playbook. In recent years they have smashed records for legal immigration, with 1.2 million (around half of that being net migration) arriving on the island for two consecutive years. 

Despite the party's virtually open border policy, the commonly held view by the British public of the Conservatives is that of an anti-immigration government. The skewed perspective derives from the Tories' tough talking in response to the migrant boats arriving in increasing numbers.

The images of young Middle Eastern, African and South Asian men packed on small boats, arriving on British shores has awoken trepidation in even the most docile centrist-conservative minds.

Acutely aware of this, the Conservatives set up an action plan, prioritising stopping the boats. Whilst they have reduced the numbers by around 20% the illegals continue to flood in, whilst the government has some statistics to suggest they are taking firm action. 

Of course, if they were genuinely interested in halting the invading hordes they would take a similar course of action to the Australians in the 2010s and tow the boats back to whence they came, which proved almost 100% effective.

The Conservatives, like Law and Justice in Poland have identified the need to appease their largely anti-immigration voter base. Highlighting red herrings such as defiance to the EU’s immigrant allocation programme or slowing down the number of small boats reaching the coastline, are a drop in the ocean in comparison to the amount of legal immigration each government is enabling.

If their core voters (unlike the politicians, conservative-minded and to some extent ideologically right wing) were made explicitly aware of how willingly the two current governments are changing the demographics of their countries and the danger they are putting them in for the sake of economic gains, these parties would not be in power come the next election.