Number of foreigners in Poland?

warsawvoice/WVpage/pages/article.php/17367/news

Does anybody else get the feeling that Eurostat has had the wool pulled over its eyes?

What is the methodology they use to calculate the numbers? The number of about 15 000 EU citizens does seem to be quite low.

As far as I know, Eurostat uses data supplied by relevant organisations in member states. Given that there are about 30,000 Vietnamese in Warsaw, the 14,800 EU citizens here mean that supposedly there are only 700 people living in Poland who are from the 177 countries which are neither part of the EU nor Vietnam.

It all seems decidedly unlikely, i guess the problem might be that either the people are not registering and making themselves known, or the government is failing to count the people registered adequately or perhaps a combination of both. My guess would be that the total number of foreigners both EU and non EU citizens would probably reach a 100 000 or more.

newsweek.pl/artykuly/sekcje/biznes/150-tysiecy-ukraincow-pr acuje-legalnie-w-polsce,47700,1

Eurostat :)

I get the feeling that they received data from Poland and simply assumed that it was correct. I would also imagine that very few of those 150,000 Ukrainians were included in the 45,500 foreigners who live in Poland (on the basis that most of the ones who are here legal can only be here for up to six months, and so are not counted as living here, and that the ones who are here illegally simply are not counted at all).

Some useful facts about immigration in Poland can be found in the forum migracyjne pages. The materials are both in English and Polish, but - as usual in such cases - the Polish version provides much more useful information than the former one. For example, the section "Infolinia Migracyjna" contains a database of questions already asked and answered, while the English version of the corresponding section is empty. Of course you may try to ask your own questions in English and see if and when you'll get your answer.

The category "Data and statistics" is relevant to this topic and can be found here: forummigracyjne.org/pl/faq.php?kat=4

The following is my translation of some of the topics taken from that category. The emerging picture is a total information mess caused by many factors: political correctness, lack of comprehensive policies, ad hoc solutions, overlapping responsibilities. Add to it an estimated number of 500,000 illegal immigrants a year (100,000 from former Soviet Union alone). In addition, Polish Border Guard reported that, in the year 2003 alone, they stopped 5800 foreigners at the border due to lack of documents, refused entrance to 66,000 foreigners, and deported 6200 persons to their country of origin.

Other thread:


This thread:


What's changed your mind from this thread to your other thread Poland hosts lowest proportion of foreigners in the EU, Harry?

The two statements are not exactly mutually exclusive, now are they? For example, despite the fact that I've been living here for nearly 16 years and am on the electoral role here, I very much doubt that I have been counted as a foreigner living in Poland.

As far as I know - the statistics are simply based upon valid residence permits issued.

Now, how many EU citizens actually bother to obtain them?

As for the Vietnamese - wouldn't many of them have Polish citizenship these days?

And how many holders of British citizenship think the same as I do, i.e. Poles in the UK aren't forced to jump through any hoops to satisfy red tape, so I'm not going to either?


Are you having a laugh?! Over the last ten years there have been about 1,000 applications by Vietnamese people for refugee status in Poland: the grand total of those who have been accepted is two. Of the 30,000 Vietnamese in Poland, only 40% are here legally. Instead of helping people who are fleeing the commie regime in VN, Poland invited agents from the VN political intelligence unit to interrogate people in Poland. This is against the Geneva convention but that doesn't seem to bother Poland.

The UK is actually really weird like this - I cannot understand why they don't at least pretend to have some sort of registration. It does exist, but seems to be totally ignored by everyone. Almost every EU state has a similar scheme - Poland isn't unique.

(mind you - Poland never had any nonsense like the Worker Registration Scheme post-accession for EU nationals).

But I'd say that the vast majority of EU citizens here haven't bothered with any formalities apart from what's needed to actually work. I only bothered because I wanted to pass my driving test here!


Bloody hell, it's so low?

I admit it - I know **** all about them, but I thought most of them were here after coming during Commie times.

Britain no longer has anything for Poles. Pity that Poland can't return the favour but not exactly a surprise.


No, it had and has a more restrictive scheme!


Er, Vietnam still has commie times: that is what the refugees are escaping from. But Poland apparently no longer gives a toss about the victims of communism, despite expecting everybody else to when Poles suffered from communism.

Harry, you need to outline how communism manifests itself in different countries. For example, in quite a few ways, times were better under communism in Hungary and Bulgaria than they have it now. Now, I'm no fan of the general appearance of communism but you can't be so loose with labelling it.

Number of foreigners? Dunno, haven't counted them. Check GUS or other census data but I think you'll still get a skewed picture.

Human Rights Watch say "In 2009, Vietnam intensified its suppression of dissent in an effort to bolster the authority of the Communist Party. ... The Party is not shy in defending its repression of human rights to a domestic audience." hrw.org/en/news/2010/03/24/testimony-sophie-richardson-tom- lantos-human-rights-commission

U.S. State Department characterized Vietnam's human rights record as "poor" and cited the continuation of "serious abuses".

According to an EU parliament resolution "[The European Parliament]
1. Expresses its great concern about the growing climate of intolerance in Vietnam towards human rights defenders and members of officially unrecognised religious communities;

2. Calls on the government to cease all forms of repression against those who exercise their rights to freedom of expression, freedom of belief and freedom of assembly in accordance with international human rights standards and the Vietnamese Constitution;"

europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=MOTION&reference=B7-2009- 0157&language=EN

A report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states "The use of torture against religious adherents has generally declined, although it has not disappeared entirely." Interestingly, given that Poland is supposedly the most Catholic nation on the planet, quite a few of those being persecuted for their faith are Catholics. "Vietnamese officials arrested and beat a group of Catholics for attempting to peacefully attend a trial of prominent lawyer and human rights activist Cu Huy Ha Vu on April 4." catholicnewsagency.com/news/vietnamese-catholics-beaten-arr ested-for-supporting-human-rights-lawyer/

"Vietnamese human rights activist and Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly is at risk of being returned to prison in mid-March despite his fragile health. He suffered from a stroke in prison in November 2009 which left him partially paralyzed, after being held in solitary confinement. He did not receive adequate medical treatment."

amnesty.org/en/library/info/ASA41/001/2011/en

But instead of trying to protect people from a country which is very much like Poland was when Poles expected help where-ever they went, Poland works with the secret police of Vietnam and sends people back to Vietnam to suffer! It's a stain on the honour of Poland.

Except for the fact that it is not very much like Poland, Communism was imposed on the Poles, whilst in Vietnam it was mostly a homegrown product of the Vietnamese people. A bit of a difference I fancy.

h1c, maybe in the north of the country, but certainly not in the south, many of the Vietnamese from the south, suffered a terrible fate after the Americans, ditched.

In the late 1970s 1.5 million Vietnamese were members of the communist party, that is 3.1% of the total population. At the same time in Poland 3.5 million Poles were members of the communist party, that is 10% of the total population. Care to reassess your statement?


And almost all of the nations Catholics were in the south when that happened.

Hearsay or fact, H

Seems pretty much like fact to me. Have a read:

wyborcza.pl/1,86871,5783418,Vietnamese_Security_Police_Again_Ac tive_in_Poland.html
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54660

I don't think anyone in Poland would mind a few hundred thousand foreigners in Poland, unless jobs were really scarce. For a larger European state like Poland the problems would begin' once it got up into the millions. I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to see happen to Poland what has happened to Spain.

Foreign population in Spain
Year Population % total
1981 198,042 0.52%
1986 241,971 0.63%
1991 360,655 0.91%
1996 542,314 1.37%
1998 637,085 1.60%
2000 923,879 2.28%
2001 1,370,657 3.33%
2002 1,977,946 4.73%
2003 2,664,168 6.24%
2004 3,034,326 7.02%
2005 3,730,610 8.46%
2006 4,144,166 9.27%
2007 4,519,554 10.0%
2008 5,220,600 11.3%
2009 5,598,691 12.0%
2010 5,708,940 12.2%
2011 5,730,667 12.2%

Bear in mind that many "foreigners" in Spain are actually Latin American people with clear roots in Spain.

Spain was horribly unattractive for them until they started welcoming them in recent years - the explosion between 2000 and 2010 can be well attributed to that - as well as the country being very attractive for Brits and Germans. In Spain alone, I seem to recall that they had estimated up to 2 million Brits actually living there semi-regularly!

Not really. I know a Mexican woman who has a niece playing women's basketball over there and they're not too friendly to her. The Latin Americans are mostly Mestizos, or fully Indian and are just part or have no Spanish blood in them. The Spaniards know this and disapprove of them who they see only as Spanish-speaking.

Oh yeah, that much is true - I was talking to a guy today who was telling me (as a Chinese-American guy living there) that Spain is quite safe for him, because all the vicious knife fights are between "real" Spanish people and Latinos.

The Spanish Government is officially welcoming them though - they've got some very liberal passport laws at the minute.

I could believe the article. I was just in Poland last month for 3 weeks. Saw Warsaw, Wroclaw, Brzeg and Karpacz. I spotted maybe 5 blacks in Warsaw, along with maybe 5 Asian people. Also 2 Arabs who ran an Arab restaurant. On the transportation system it was all white people. On the trip from Warsaw to Wroclaw and back, all white, most likely all Polish too. Saw a Gypsy family in Brzeg. Karpacz was all white. They say Polska is the most homogenous country in Europe. I believe it. And thank God for that.

And German.

delphiandomine
A lot of tourists from Germany (and Czech Republic) visit Karpacz. Native population's Polish. I have some cousins there.

Well the commies did win them independence from the the French, didn't they?

My approach to non EU immigration would be ideally based on the Australian points system roughly translated to in John Howard's famous words "we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."