With friends like these, you don’t need enemies

How the migrant issue is pitting Poland against Western countries

Despite the fact that leftist forces, seemingly agreeable to the current EU leadership, are at the helm in Warsaw, distinct undercurrents of discontent continue to flow into Poland from the West. The reason for this is our neighbour’s migration policy, in which the xenophobia typical of the Polish elites has blended in a whimsical manner with a desire to obtain European funding and ingratiate itself with Brussels.

Long-standing feud

Warsaw’s most acute conflict these days is with Berlin. This is hardly surprising — the countries have a far from untroubled history of co-existence. Yet, if previously they were dividing territories, in this new round of confrontation, the two ‘eagles’ can’t seem to agree on migrants.
Back in autumn 2023, precisely during the successful elections for the currently ruling Civic Platform grouping, Germany introduced temporary border controls at its borders with neighbouring Poland to limit the entry of illegal migrants and slow down the development of cross-border crime. However, as is well known, nothing is more permanent than the temporary, and as the term of Chancellor Olaf Scholz is drawing to a close, he has extended the period of border control until September 15th. The tightening of migration policy has become one of the key elements of the new coalition agreement between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
At the end of last winter, another scandal erupted between Germany and Poland: at the border crossing in Lubieszyn, video cameras captured a scene of a couple of German police officers, dressed in protective suits, bringing a migrant in similar attire to the border and pushing him onto Polish territory. Adding sharpness to the incident was the fact that similar precedents had already occurred in the spring and summer of last year. Then, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk had a conversation with Scholz about the ‘unacceptable’ behaviour of the German police, and German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser apologised and promised not to do it again.

However, considering what Polish border guards are doing with refugees on the Belarusian borders, the revelatory ‘pot calling the kettle black’ statement springs to mind. 

Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk stated in late March that the republic would respond harshly if Berlin dared to start mass deportations of illegal migrants to its territory. At the same time, Andrzej Duda has signed a law temporarily suspending the right to asylum for migrants entering the country via the border with Belarus.
The commotion surrounding the refugee problem is more like trying to hold sand that is slipping through your fingers. Everyone has probably seen the video of the ‘impregnable’ Polish fence, whereas the Bild newspaper has recently reported on a legal loophole that migrants are using to enter Germany. After obtaining temporary documents allowing them to stay in the Schengen area for 90 days, refugees board budget airlines to Germany, where they apply for asylum again. According to the publication, 25,000 migrants entered Germany this way in 2024 alone.
Just in the last few months, over 10,000 migrants have been sent to Poland from Germany. Indeed, it is a real merry-go-round of refugees: Polish thugs in the east mercilessly beat the unfortunate and throw them into Belarus. Meanwhile, in the west, Germans are bringing illegal migrants into Poland in busloads.

Political games

While the authorities engage in public bickering, the situation on both sides of the border is heating up. In early March, the mayor of the Polish town of Zgorzelec, Rafał Gronicz, announced his intention to submit a petition to the European Parliament against the border controls — which are disrupting the lives of local residents — imposed by Germans. Last month, protesters with the slogan ‘Stop Germany from flooding Poland with migrants’ blocked a bridge in Słubice and organised an anti-immigrant rally in Zgorzelec. On the German side, meanwhile, a new deportation centre in Eisenhüttenstadt, with a capacity of 150-250 places, has been put into operation near the Polish border.

Amidst all this turmoil, both Poland’s PiS (Law and Justice party) and Civic Platform are actively trying to score points ahead of the upcoming May elections.

The right-wing supports the protests at the border and accuses the Tusk government of planning to accept refugees in accordance with the EU Migration Pact. The ruling party, as a snub to its opponents, is publishing footage of the deportation of foreign criminals on military aircraft.
PiS, which fiercely fights for the purity of the nation in its rhetoric, is still unable to shake off the pre-election scandal involving Deputy Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk, who accepted bribes in return for allowing thousands of illegal immigrants into Poland.
Anyway, this does not save Warsaw from external criticism. Politico has published a scathing article about the cruelty of Polish border guards on the Belarusian border, with detailed descriptions of atrocities such as stripping people naked in freezing temperatures, offering poisoned water, and mistreating pregnant women.

Invasion

Belarus’ western neighbour is often referred to as the country with the most mono-ethnic population in Europe, yet in recent years the number of migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa has been steadily growing.
Migrant detention centres are becoming a symbol of one of the main fears for Poles. Officially, according to the authorities, they are intended for language learning and psychological assistance. However, in reality, things look different: residents of Podlasie complain that groups of migrants from the centre in Czerwony Bór roam aimlessly through the streets, frightening farmers.
Fearing a repeat of the situation, residents of settlements where similar centres may soon appear — a total of 49 such organisations are planned in Poland this year alone — are taking to the streets to protest. In early April, rallies were held in Toruń under the slogans ‘No to migration’ and ‘A Pole is master in Poland’; earlier, such actions took place in Białystok, Katowice, Zamość, Suwałki and Siedlce.
The situation is paradoxical. In words, the Polish authorities do not intend to implement the migration pact, emphasising that they have already spent money on Ukrainian refugees, and EU payments have been more than modest. In fact, however, there seem to be two parallel realities, in one of which brutal enforcers under the white-red flag are raging on the border with Belarus, and in the other, there are noticeably more foreigners in Polish cities.

It seems to us that the issue here is still money, and the Tusk government — while creating the illusion of resistance to Brussels — is trying to milk more funds from the ‘Euro-cow’, allegedly for the maintenance of migrants.

All this would not have happened if the West had not unleashed a series of wars and ‘colour revolutions’ in Africa and the Middle East at the beginning of the century. It was those military conflicts that triggered mass migration from the scorched territories to Europe. And Poland, as a participant in American military campaigns, bears responsibility for this.

By Anton Popov