Take back control? On the new Polish migration strategy

At the Civic Coalition convention in Warsaw on Saturday 12 October 2024, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced the a Polish migration strategy. In his speech on the project with the resonant name ‘Take back control, ensure security’, Tusk said that: ‘the Law and Justice party for eight years built a system, partly corrupt, which allowed the uncontrolled influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants (…) All this led to Law and Justice bringing hundreds of thousands here, which the state may not have wanted to see come to Poland at all,’ he said. At the same time, he stressed that ‘the state must regain 100 per cent control over who enters and leaves Poland’, and therefore ‘illegal migration will be reduced to a minimum’. But everyone remembered only one sentence of Prime Minister Tusk: ‘One of the elements of the migration strategy will be a temporary, territorial suspension of the right to asylum, and I will demand in Europe the right to recognise this decision’. After a second, he emphasised this by adding: ‘If someone wants to come to Poland, they must accept Polish standards. They must want to integrate.’

Undoubtedly, this speech will go down in history, the question is, of what: the European Union or extremely catchy political PR?

But the whole story of Poland’s harsher stance on migration starts a lot earlier than that. On 31 August 2023, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dismissed Piotr Wawrzyk from his post as Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was only the beginning of a major scandal involving the Polish foreign service. According to the liberal opposition, foreign ministry employees were selling Polish visas, going so far as to allow the sale of signed papers at an outdoor stall in an unidentified African country.

According to some, the entire affair involved a significant part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Others say it involved about a dozen people. There was also disagreement over the number of visas allegedly sold. The opposition said 300,000, while the Foreign Ministry admits that no more than 300 to 400 documents were wrongly allocated.

A parliamentary committee has been set up to investigate the so-called visa scandal, which has uncovered irregularities in the activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, namely evidence of lobbying by third parties to increase the number of visas or temporary work permits that were later to be cancelled. The legal consequences of this are to be borne by the politicians of the previous government, or at least that is what the current power camp is preparing for, probably closer to the presidential elections — which will be about ‘difficult and troubled (geopolitical) times’. Whoever demonstrates that the other side is unfit to lead in such times will win.

Interestingly, however, anonymous voices from within the committee pointed to another dimension of the affair. Namely, that there is a forceful private sector lobby in Poland calling for more cheap labour immigrants in the country. This is a thread that a committee does not want to pull because of the potential political costs. After all, big business is behind Poland’s two hegemonic parties, both of which are right-wing. Nevertheless, expert voices from all sides of the political argument have forced the new government to act — at the end of the day, Polish politicians have never created any migration strategy, leaving everything to fate, or rather, business actors.

Already in February 2024, the Ministry of the Interior and Administration launched work on the development of a comprehensive, responsible and safe Polish migration strategy for 2025-2030. A timetable of activities was set, according to which a draft of this strategy should be developed in October-November 2024, following public consultations.

‘Take Back Control’

On 15 October, the Council of Ministers adopted a resolution on the strategy ‘Take Back Control. Ensure security. Comprehensive and responsible migration strategy of Poland for 2025-2030’. On 17 October, the 36-page document was published by the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and submitted to the public.

According to the assumptions presented, the final version of the draft migration strategy will be prepared in December 2024. The draft will then be discussed by the Council of Ministers. On this basis, new draft laws will be prepared between January and June 2025. This will include a new law on foreigners. Nevertheless, now we know where the new strategy leads.

The Polish migration strategy proposed by the government of Donald Tusk marks a significant shift in response to evolving national and regional needs. The main focus of the strategy is to outline changes in eight key areas of migration policy. These include the development of a rapid response model to counter provocations — so-called hybrid war — from neighbouring Russia and Belarus

Firstly, a key component of the strategy is the introduction of employer declarations for the hiring of foreign nationals, initially limited to citizens of three and then six Eastern European countries. In addition, the plan emphasises the digitalisation of migration processes in order to streamline the processing of residence permit applications and reduce staff turnover in migration offices.

The government also proposes:

Introduction of a points-based system to regulate the entry of foreign workers, tailored to Polish labour market needs
Implementation of student admission limits in specific academic fields
Adjustment of absenteeism policy, shifting from an annual to a semi-annual assessment
Creation of special visas for grant-funded international researchers to attract global scholars
Development of enhanced policies to encourage diaspora return
Establishment of a structured pathway for the rapid and effective integration of foreign children into the Polish education system

Secondly, the strategy also emphasises the elimination of exploitative practices and legal loopholes in migration and employment systems. This includes targeting temporary employment agencies that break the law or exploit workers, and closing loopholes that allow fictitious student enrolment to secure residence in the EU.

Addressing the illegal practices document focuses on measures dedicated to eliminating irregularities in the visa system, preventing abuse of visa application procedures and tackling the misuse of company shares by foreigners to circumvent formal employment rules. The strategy also aims at eliminating intermediaries who exploit legalisation procedures for residence, thus ensuring that only genuine applicants benefit from migration policies.

Finally, the document calls for:

Restoration of border controls
Implementation of digital processing for residence legalisation applications
Adaptation of government offices to meet the needs of foreign nationals
Alignment of migration policies with market and state needs
Increased role for the Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the Minister of Internal Affairs
Strengthening border cooperation with Schengen Area countries

At the same time, following the ‘visa scandal’, work on a visa policy is still in progress; this has only been outlined in the form of potential practices within the above document, but the specific diplomatic activities and framework in which they are to operate still need to be worked out, subsequently becoming part of the Migration Strategy 2025-2030. It is planned, however, that it will be based on two criteria: country of origin and foreigner profile.

Another moral panic?

So what was it about Tusk’s words that everyone remembered? Donald Tusk’s remarks about suspending the right to asylum caused a bit of a stir. Not only did coalition partners have questions, but so did party members. The same went for the media, experts, activists in one or another way connected to the broader liberal camp — which used to fight gainst the Law and Justice’ ‘fascist’ government and its anti-immigration measures. Some said to wait for the strategy to be published, while others were quick to change their rhetoric on the migration issues right away. Leading to many revolting U-turns rhetorically aimed at yesterday’s allies.

The Prime Minister was quickly facing backlash from legal and humanitarian groups. They sent him a letter reminding him that the right to asylum is guaranteed by the Geneva Convention, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the Polish Constitution.

‘Denying migrants the right to asylum is not only against Polish law and international agreements. It’s just cruel,’ commented Magdalena Biejat, who is the Deputy Speaker of the Senate, at the time one of the leaders of Razem party, after a U-turn now one of the turncoats that switched sides, joining the camp of Tusk’s government.

The Marshal of the Sejm, Szymon Holownia, leader of Poland 2050 party, wrote on Facebook on Monday that his party backs stronger border security, but also thinks that the right to asylum is a fundamental right. He noted that the Prime Minister was only expressing his opinion, as the strategy wasn’t part of the coalition agreement. So what was the Tusk’s aim in making such a revolting statement?

Tusk tends to play politics with moral panics that focus all the attention on him and not on concrete actions or solutions — which can be infinitely far from what he himself has said. This was also the case here; a few days later, Tusk himself began to soften his own remarks.

The overheated statement on asylum may also have been a prelude to the two-day European Council summit in Brussels, which began on Thursday 17 October. Migration is supposed to be one of the main topics of the meeting, and such a radical stance would have improved the negotiating position of Poland — which does not want to accept any migrants apart from those from Ukraine or Belarus.

In Poland, the declaration on asylum would change the tone of the migration strategy. Although the whole point of the document is to regulate and de facto limit immigration, the right wing is presenting it as the opposite — mainly because of the plan to open more than 40 centres for foreigners, which can hardly be considered anything apart from the restoration of the state’s competence in the field of migration. So far, it has not existed.

Thanks to Tusk’s words, there is a good chance that right-wing audiences will not notice the PiS’s spin, but the outrage in liberal circles over the prime minister’s anti-immigrant tones. In media leaks, activists from parties that are part of the Civic Coalition indicate that, in their view, the prime minister’s words may have been a deliberate excursion into right-wing territory. They were intended to divert attention from the actions of the still-powerful Law and Justice, and also to strengthen the Civic Coalition ahead of the presidential elections – whose main themes are supposed to be security and hard times. Stepping into the right-wing’s shoes seems ideal, especially since, after taking over the public media, they have all the machinery at their disposal to highlight it.

End product

There’s been a big decline in the number of babies being born in Poland recently. The latest figures from the country’s Central Statistical Office (GUS) show that just 259,000 babies were born between August 2023 and July 2024. That’s the lowest number since World War II. July 2024 saw a slight rise in the number of live births, with 23,500, but this is still well below the 19,000 recorded in June. The numbers are still way down compared to previous years, with 272,000 births in 2023 and 305,000 in 2022.

This decline in the number of births is partly due to a smaller number of women of childbearing age (15–49), which has fallen to 8.6 million, nearly a million fewer than in 2010. There has also been a decline in the number of children born per woman, which fell to 1.16 in 2023. The combination of low birth rates and a natural population decrease – 148,000 more deaths than births in the past year – is a worrying trend for Poland’s future. It raises concerns about whether the population will be sustainable in the long term.

Meanwhile, Poland is facing a rapidly ageing population, with demographic trends showing a declining birth rate and an increasing life expectancy. As younger generations shrink, the proportion of older adults grows, placing pressure on social services, healthcare, and the workforce. The latest data indicates that the number of people over 65 is projected to rise significantly, exacerbating challenges in providing adequate support and resources for the elderly. This demographic shift raises concerns about economic sustainability and the capacity of social systems to handle a growing elderly population.

Poland’s demographic policy should be multifaceted and include not only issues that directly encourage people to have children, but also migration, housing and health policies, among others. However, all the indications are that in the current situation, any political issue, even if it is the demographic crisis, the literal extinction of a nation, can only be addressed if it can be used to attack an opponent. This is also the case with the current migration policy. It is difficult to see bold solutions, difficult to find concrete solutions. You could say that we are talking about everything and nothing at the same time. What will it look like in the end when the strategy has been refined? Nobody knows. But it is possible that in many respects it will be too late to come up with a strategy.

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