photo by Michał M. MajewskiMigration policy is simply a uncommon case where the PiS government has prepared a correct diagnosis of why the Polish economy needs workers from another countries. He even wanted to start acting on the basis of this diagnosis, but then seemingly he concluded that politically, however, it is more profitable to scare Poles with migrants. The opposition should show that the PiS must leave, due to the fact that it cannot effectively rule, not bid with the PiS, from which migrants are more dangerous
In the PiS election campaign, he began utilizing the subject of migrants to heat up negative emotions. He invented a referendum on election day as an additional origin in mobilising their voters. The PO took the lead. Donald Tusk's last video was expected to show immigration hypocrisy of the PiS, but his form besides builds an atmosphere of aversion to immigrants. Tusk refers to the draft MFA Regulation, which is intended to facilitate the obtaining of an worker visa for citizens of 20 countries. I read this government document, and I began to wonder if there was specified a thing as a government migration policy that this draft regulation fits into. It turned out that the government on specified a comprehensive approach to migration had started work, but in 2021 the subject abandoned and there is presently no government paper that would make a framework for concrete implementing solutions.
All, in peculiar journalists of all editorials, should request the PiS data, how many migrants in the next 10 years the Polish economy needs. If we don't see these data, that's another reason why the Law and Justice Department should be removed from power due to the fact that they can't rule.
The game of chess has simple rules, you can see what is happening on the chessboard, you can besides foretell subsequent moves. It should be the same with long-term migration policies. Our politicians decided differently and the migrants decided to play chess like the children on the attached image – it's crucial to whom the figures would be faster.
2020: Migration policy of Poland – diagnosis of the starting state
The beginnings were very promising and professionally conducted. In 2020, despite the pandemic, the MMA's migration policy department, working with the UW Migration investigation Centre and another NGOs, prepared a paper Migration policy of Poland – diagnosis of the starting state. The final version of this paper was accepted in December 2020. In the field of legal migration, the study presented the following findings:
- The number of foreigners working in Poland was about 1 million people. abroad participation in the Polish labour marketplace was estimated at 5% and grew rapidly (in 2013 it was below 1%)
- GUS forecasts indicated that between 2020 and 2020 the number of people of mobile working age (18-44 years) would decrease by almost 1.18 million people in Poland, after 2025 the declining trend will continue.
- Migration policy should be the main way of filling the demographic gap in the labour market. After 2035, erstwhile the demographic boom generation of the 1970s and 1980s passes into retirement, current inflows of economical migrants may not be enough
- In the long term, migration policy is not a adequate tool to bridge the demographic gap.
The paper besides contains basic data describing the economical impact of migrants: the number of applications for work permits for foreigners – 485 000 in 2019, 651 000 insured foreigners in the Social safety Office, about 1% of GDP generated by immigrants. He besides explains that the increase in the participation of immigrants in the Polish labour marketplace could be offset by the increase in the professional activity of people of pre-retirement age and by expanding the effective retirement age, drawing a clear alternate – either Poles will work more and longer, or a gap in the labour marketplace must be filled by immigrants.
The paper describes all crucial aspects of immigration – visa facilitation, integration of foreigners in Poland, access to education, public services for foreigners, the request to make integration programmes. This was all accepted and accepted by the Interministerial Migration squad of the government of Mateusz Morawiecki.
2021: Migration policy of Poland – directions of action 2021-2022
In 2021, an implementing paper on migration policy was created, to be accepted by the Council of Ministers. It included the actions planned for 2021-22 and was to be updated annually in view of the rapidly changing migration environment. The paper correctly defined the request for a coherent migration policy:
"It is essential to guarantee coordinated coherent action in the area of migration management. In addition, migration policy must be a public policy, accepted and implemented not only by government but besides by self-government and social entities."
In the field of legal migration, the main lines of action are as follows:
1. Strengthening the organization strategy in the area of legalisation of residence and employment.
2. Complementing labour marketplace shortages and ensuring a crucial share of highly qualified and skilled foreigners, with peculiar emphasis on the east neighbourhood, due to linguistic and cultural proximity.
3. Exploring the possible of Polish universities in the field of abroad education.
4. Preventing abuse and the negative consequences of legal migration.
The paper developed thesis from 2020 and proposed actions concerning the integration of foreigners into Polish society. In the summertime of 2021 there was a turn of events – the completed paper was not adopted by the government, the MMA migration policy department was dissolved, and the effort to implement a coherent migration policy failed. The year 2022 is simply a period of ad hoc solutions related to the adoption of the wave of war migrants from Ukraine. The year 2023 could be a time of return to the implementation of what was planned by the government in 2021, but seemingly the PiS preferred to make the subject of migration a cauldron election
2023: Draft Regulation facilitating the issuance of labour visas, Impact Assessment
The PiS government has resigned from defining migration policy, but this does not mean that migration problems have solved themselves. 1 specified problem is the failure of Polish consulates and this problem tried to address the regulation, which became the origin of Donald Tusk's last video.
Figure 1. Selected Impact Assessment points for the draft regulation
It's interesting to read Assessments of Regulatory Effects to this government paper – HERE.
The draft regulation is intended to facilitate visa procedures in 20 countries. alternatively of consulates, applications are intended to aid external companies, and then will be processed by MFA officials in Warsaw, not consulate workers. Thanks to this, more than 400,000 visas are to be granted annually, mainly visas allowing to work in Poland. The number of 400,000 visas alone should not be surprising, yet almost half a million applications for work permits for foreigners were submitted in 2019. It is more amazing that the regulation refers to more than 2 million visas per year starting in the 3rd year of its validity. These planned visa numbers in a moment.
There is no breakdown of the number of visas per country, and given that the regulation is besides intended to apply to citizens of Belarus, Ukraine and Vietnam, it is simply a large and unnecessary abuse to present that this is to be hundreds of thousands of workers from Muslim countries. If individual wants to work in Poland and respects Polish law, the country from which he comes should not matter.
Reading more columns Assessments of Regulatory Effects, it can be concluded that this paper was prepared in 1 afternoon, without any consultation:
- How has the problem been solved in another OECD/EU countries? – no data.
This data is and the Polish Ministry of abroad Affairs should have no problems with reaching the cognition of how another countries cope with the efficient handling of visas.
- Information on the scope, duration and summary of the results of the consultation – Given the limited scope of the regulation, no public consultation was conducted.
I have a question here, how precisely does the Law and Justice government work? On 13 June, the MFA recognises that there is no request for consultation for the issue of hundreds of thousands of labour visas for migrants per year. On 15 June, Jarosław Kaczyński of the Parliamentary talker will avenge the European Union's refusal to relocate respective 1000 migrants from another EU countries. My working version is that Kaczyński was afraid to say that in Poland the labour marketplace needs hundreds of thousands of migrants, and the president of his anti-immigration tirades delivered without knowing what 1 of the ministries of the Law and Justice government was doing about it.
I thought the "Impact on the public finance sector" box contained incorrect data, but it shows the actual number of visa applications supported. In the 3rd year of application of the Regulation, the gross for granting visas is to be PLN 776 million. The visa fee is 80 euros, at the current rate is about 355 PLN. This would mean that these applications for worker visas, starting in 2026, are to be issued over 2.1 million a year. This is besides confirmed by the information on the planned authoritative posts needed to process visa applications. The calculations indicate that 1 authoritative will be examining 70 applications a day, 14,000 applications a year. The planned fresh posts and the associated number of visa applications considered are as follows:
This data does not indicate that 2 million fresh employees from another countries are to come to Poland all year, but that the organisation is to be ready to deal with specified a number of applications. Many of these proposals will concern the extension of the visa of people already working in Poland. What the government assumes erstwhile it comes to the increase in the number of migrants in Poland, we do not know due to the fact that we do not have a paper that defines Poland's migration policy.
- Impact on economical competitiveness and entrepreneurship – deficiency of monetary impact, indirect affirmative impact on competitiveness in sectors seeking workers among foreigners.
This is simply a complete curiosium — the regulation is being prepared due to the fact that the Polish labour marketplace and economical competitiveness require it. If MFA officials can't estimation that, let the government's economical department do it.
The ‘Impact to the labour market’ section assumes that there will be virtually no impact, due to the fact that these foreigners will fill vacancyes. The regulation concerns hundreds of thousands of fresh workers and the MFA cannot tell how the unemployment or wage rates will change.
- How and erstwhile will the project's effects be assessed and what indicators will be applied? Evaluation is not planned for the proposed regulation. Therefore, no measurement of task efficiency has been defined.
We are talking about a regulation which can seriously change the labour marketplace in Poland, requires a number of another adaptation measures so that these workers can live usually in Poland. In the meantime, the government does not see the request to establish criteria whether this programme will be effective or not.
Lack of Law and Justice skills
Migration policy is an perfect example of PiS's incompetence in governance. Each average government first agrees on the strategy papers that form the framework of a policy and then adopts the circumstantial regulations that this framework fills. The cooperation of the ministries is necessary. The Law and Justice Government prepared sensible strategy papers addressing migration in 2020-21, but then resigned and selected ad hoc actions. Morawiecki and his ministers are well aware that their own policy that discourages Poles from working, leads to greater request for migrant work. They realize that workers from another countries have become a permanent part of the Polish labour market, and demographic data and the escape of young people from Poland to another countries of the European Union lead to even more migrants in the future. The liable government should explain this process to Poles and make conditions for the integration of workers from another countries into Polish society. If there were a Polish migration policy, talks within the EU on the relocation of migrants could be conducted from a position specified as these EU regulations fit, or not, to the migration policy of the Polish government.
Instead of specified a decision-making process, we have a draft MFA regulation, which is mainly driven by deficiency of local space and deficiency of jobs, to employment consular officials in countries where we want to look for workers. This implies a deficiency of a coherent imagination of economical improvement and we have the effect that on Tuesday the MFA says that we request hundreds of thousands of visas for migrant workers, and on Thursday, the head of state says "no" to relocate respective thousands of migrants who have arrived in the Union on a different way but are besides able to work.
Non-election topic
Migrants are besides serious to be the subject of political ad hoc combat. The PiS should not be bid for xenophobia, but on the example of migration policy show their incompetence in governance. All opposition parties should score PiS for deficiency of migration policy. This is all the easier due to the fact that the government of the Law and Justice Department prepared correct diagnoses and proposals for action in 2020-21, so why is it not doing them today?
Instead of a video that lists muslim states, let Donald Tusk, or another opposition leader, do the film: “Kaczyński with Morawiecki show the Poles the assumptions about the number of workers needed from another countries for the coming years”. Does the government presume that the end of the war in Ukraine and the beginning of its reconstruction can origin workers to leave Poland? What actions are planned for young Poles working in another countries to want to return and proceed their career in Poland? All parties should agree that migration is not the subject of an election campaign. Regardless of who will regulation after the election, a gap in the labour marketplace will should be filled. That would be the case if we had liable politicians. I am afraid that alternatively of this rational approach, we are facing a war on videos, press conferences and twitter "splitious" entries. I'm afraid this looks very bad.
For those interested, how the PiS migration policy has been forged and how interior contradictions in government priorities have led to its failure, I urge the improvement of a Migration investigation Centre – Migration policy "no policy"
