Polands new immigrants from the West.

In Spain and Greece, the unemployment rate is nearly 25 percent, and more than double that for people under 25. The job outlook has also darkened in Portugal, Ireland, and parts of Italy. Meanwhile, large swaths of Germany have companies that are scrambling to fill open engineering and technical positions., also Poland is being viewed as the land of opportunity for hard up PIGS.

Will Poles warmly accept their new immigrants or will they close the door?

Life in Poland without speaking Polish is next to impossible. Unless immigrants from the PIGS countries have suddenly developed skills in Slavic, or Poles develop a desire to learn Mediterranean/Adriatic languages, then I don't think Poland is under any "threat".

It's hard enough to earn a living wage doing unskilled labour in Poland; it would be next to impossible to send any money home, which is what the majority of economic migrants do.

Now that I would disagree with, I know many expats/immigrants here in Warsaw that do not desire to speak Polish or even get involved in the culture.


The new wave will be here for quality of life, better to earn buttons in a cheap country, then have no prospects in your own country, they are on the way, you can quote me on this in 6 months.

if they are they're in for a surprise. What kind of numbers do you have in mind?


Lets see how it works out, i cant see it personally.

I think it could cause significant tension, actually. Most of the jobs talked about (technical support, etc) require two foreign languages - so a Spanish guy who speaks English will start taking jobs away from young Polish graduates - and thus tempers will rise. Graduate unemployment is enough of a problem as it is in Poland - we really don't need the Spanish starting to turn up too. I'm already noticing that in Poznan, you can easily get a native speaker of Spanish for cheaper than a Polish teacher - that's not a good sign at all.

And yes, they're definitely coming. I've already met several who had no work here and who were hoping to find "something".


Depends. A wave of emigration from the Spanish who want to work, especially in jobs where Polish isn't needed (technical support, call centres) could really hurt. I know already that Poland is...shall we say fertile grounds for Spanish men who want a "chica".


Don't need to - they're already here. Saw one handing out leaflets the other day, which was...odd.

I could not quote numbers, but enough for it to be discussed quietly in certain groups.


They have landed and more are on the way WB - no bullshit

The government in Spain will start to drive down wages in order to make Spain more competitive, the government is driving inflation and disposable income is diminishing. There will be an exodus from Spain, Greece and Portugal. Poland is seen as the land of opportunity as Pol gov have promoted it as unaffected by the crisis. Many are also going to south and central america.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19868408
temi.repubblica.it/limes-heartland/leaving-europe-once-again/1917

Now - let's be fair - it's also seen as a good place to get laid. As WB says - even if you earn buttons (comparatively) - if you get girls and have enough money to live, it's a hell of a better place to live than being unemployed in Spain.

Land of opportunity? Latest Poland’s official unemployment rate is at 12.5% and steadily rising compared to the 20% in 2003. One has to keep in mind that a significant amount of Poland’s labor force moved on to greener pastures when some of the European countries opened up their labor markets for them and that’s at the time when the world’s economies were in a reasonably good shape. Where do you see this opportunity you speak of?


Worlds’ economies are in turmoil, labor market is just the reflection of that reality. The greed of the banking institutions as well as that of the corporate world trying to save a buck or two in labor costs is what got us there in the first place. This problem will persist for quite some time into the future. I don’t see Poland or any other European country being able to absorb the labor force from abroad to make enough of the difference to keep the masses quiet for much longer or get us out of the mess we all find ourselves in. Imagine how angry the crowds will be upon their return when they come back bitterly disappointed by the empty promises of the likes of you who promise them a land of milk and honey where there is none. Although shifting the labor force from one European region to another worked to a certain extent in the past it’s no longer the case. I see chaos and mess protests in the near future engulfing all of Europe, Europe bickering and ethnic tensions rising, all due to the lack of work and opportunity which will be EU’s downfall (a good thing in my opinion). Poland is in the same boat as the rest of Europe, no worse off than some perhaps but a far cry from the land of milk and honey that you paint it to be.


Keeping unemployment rate at reasonable level is not the same as creating new opportunities for domestic labor force let alone for the influx from abroad. In that aspect neither the previous nor current government of Poland do a squat except for exporting its labor force abroad where it was needed at that time and relieving the pressure on domestic front appeasing their masters in the process and boast about their achievements while haply relegating themselves to the role of a obedient vassal of the EU’s empire instead of being a full partner state and seeing themselves as equal. Not very persuasive PR campaign even to a desperate foreigner seeking work. If the **** hit the fan today, Poland is in no position to absorb its own citizen labor force currently residing and working abroad let alone a foreign one.

All around us. Don't forget that the unemployment figure also includes the numerous amount of people who are "unemployed" in order to get healthcare paid - they then happily work on the black market full time and don't pay taxes. Then again, you'd actually have to live here to understand this.


A good thing? You might like it over in North America, but we don't want a return to the bad old days of having to carry many different currencies in our pockets, the days of waiting for hours/days at the border and so on. As a North American, you haven't got a clue how the EU changed people's lives for the better.


What? Again - more nonsense PiS talk from a poorly-educated North American. If you knew anything about how Poland negotiated to join the EU - let's just say that Poland isn't afraid to make demands and get what she wants. All this claim about "obedient vassal" is just ignorance.

This applies to all countries (not just the United States) please have a look.
youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE

I also know some of these - the only word in Polish is "piwo". Very sad.
But then for example we are talking for example about a guy I know, who works for KB, stays in an apartment in the Intercontinental. Flies in Sunday evening, goes home Friday evening...What he concerns, he might as well live in Singapore :)

How used are the Poles to competition by foreigners in their own country? In the west that's nothing new, but how do our Polish friends deal with it?

From what I know the number of expats is going down all the time. Look to Kredyt Bank for example. (Or Fortis, another Belgian bank) In the beginning it was swarming with Belgian expats. Manning all the key positions during the transition period. Now there are only a handful of them. I think this is a logical and positive evolution. The locals haven taken over, because they are equally competent and feel even better the local climate.

And yes, the very key people who make the ultimate decisions will remain Belgian - Maybe 5 of them?

We are not talking expats, they are immigrants from the PIGS.


In low level positions it has never been experienced in Poland. The new wave will be a first of its kind.

Interesting question. I know that there's some resentment towards Ukrainian/Belarusian workers who do the job cheaper and better (sound familiar...?), but nothing in terms of nationwide resentment.

Could change very quickly if the Spanish start taking jobs away from young graduates.

Greece is like this Monkey cought with fist in cookie jar, only way out for them is to leave the Euro and propably EU but they're too addicted to easy life to try the hard and risky way. Not that Austerity from Brussels will be comfy as Greece is testing ground in how to change your society from Market Social Economy to Debt slavery for all.

With each passing year it becomes more difficult to immigrate to Poland. While on television, and you can hear all kinds of simplifications in obtaining visas (use visa services) and documents for the visa is still considered more carefully now, and quite a long time. And the stamp in the passport is not free any more. To a greater extent this is due to the European status of Poland and its accession to the Schengen zone. The old Soviet proverb «Chicken is not a bird, Poland is not abroad» little relevance...

What?

Do you actually believe this rubbish that you're writing? It was the Greeks who got themselves into a mess of debt, no-one else. Greece is actually a testing ground for how to prevent a country from collapsing economically. They're actually managing to cut their debts - which is what everyone wants.

Lol, no it's because they're in a trap - hoping for a bailout (read: central bank buying debt), but in actual real policy they should never had surrendered the ability to 'print' currency. Now they've no choice since the time to discard the single currency and turn on the inflation was before their crisis battered the credit to sh!t. And no European power (and their puppets in Greece) wants the waves of a country breaking the Euro

They'll bail out because the EU smells the blood of the union.
What did they expect? A single currency without a functional central bank? It's only their (impossible) 'austerity' fantasies that hopes for a payback of the credit before the actual economy is cratered holding them back now

What's happening in Greece is the slash and burn of the future prospects of an entire nation.

Yes, but that's because their economy before was based upon printing drachmas and creating an inflationary environment in order to soak up all the undeclared income. The whole system relied on deflation in order to combat the rampant income tax evasion.


They've only got themselves to blame. If they hadn't lied so much and actually paid tax that they owed, they would be in a far better place now.

It worked for them for decades, it is all that counts. Then, they got lured into euro currency.
You cannot suddenly convince a Polish person to call himself European first. I suppose the same applies to Greeks as well, and most citizens in European countries. Most people are not nationalistic but they do have a sense of national identity. And when you try to suppress it, you get nationalism.

When you see countries like Belgium striving to stay one piece because of their languages, what are you actually thinking? That you can make a peaceful nation out of so many different and unequal countries, with 15-20 different languages? I think they are forcing things too much, too early. And it became very obvious during the last years.

But hey, the financial agenda keeps going. Lets have a crisis and then ask for a unification, it's an old trick. And if it doesn't work now, no problem. We'll have another crisis in some years. Maybe then it will work.

Maybe Goldman Sachs and their wealthy US-educated politician friends are hiding the debts of another unrully EU member, just like they did with Greece. Stay tuned folks.

Actually - if you look back, the EU only let them in because they produced some figures saying that they were doing fine. Now we know it was all lies, but at the time, Greece wanted in. They certainly would have been better out of it from the very beginning, but their own greed ruined it for them.

Poles are among the most European of the lot. Haven't you heard the demands to be considered an integral part of central Europe? Haven't you seen the massive amount of participation in European projects? They still identify with Poland first, but we all do - being European exists alongside nationality. Anyway, the EU doesn't suppress it - it encourages it. If it didn't, why does the EU have a massive bill every year for translation?


The thinking is logical - everyone plays by the same rules under the same environment. It's not quite there, but look at how Schengen has caused many communities to function as one. Go to Gorlitz/Zgorzelec, or Irun/Hendaye - these places are operating as one, not two. Borders are vanishing before our very eyes. As the EU evolves, barriers will fall and people will mix more and more. It's no bad thing. Languages are encouraged in the EU and diversity is embraced. I wrote a letter to my local MEP once asking if I could use my own minority language (not English) in correspondence with her - and she replied positively, saying that it would take time to get the translation done, but they were happy to reply in my mother tongue if I wanted.


Self inflicted crisis, you should add. No-one made the Greeks borrow all that cash.

Integral? Never heard of it. Poland is located in central europe, as oposed to estern europe, there is nothing more to this. But it is beside the point.

The Greek debt problem is the result of irresponsibility, yes, but the Germans definitely benefited from Greece's (and not only Greece's) debt-funded spending spree. But the Greek debt did not appear overnight after they joined the Eurozone. They already had a big debt when they joined. When they joined the Euro their borrowing costs went down, they had access to cheaper credit because they were borrowing Euros instead of their previous national currency.

Both the Greeks and the Italians have a twofold problem, they spend a lot and their tax systems are full of holes. Berlusconi himself encouraged people to dodge 30+% tax rates because they are too high. If they fixed that before the global recession hit then maybe they wouldn't have been in such deep **** as they are now, but the ****** tax system is just one part of their problem.

Greece is a financial corpse at this point. They cannot pay back their debt unless they pull some kind of deposit of a valuable commodity out of their as which will increase their revenue by a lot. That is unlikely to happen. Deep recession or an outright depression is the only thing that awaits the Greek economy.

If Greece wasn't in the eurozone it could just print money and devalue it's currency until it could pay off its debts.

You can't have a monetary union without a fiscal union. UK can issue currency to pay off debts. Greece can not. Only way to solve it is to have common fiscal policy for all Europe.

Which they are trying to do but I cannot see it succeeding. The Maastricht criteria were promptly ignored by every country that broke them. The new budget criteria and punishment mechanism will only remain on paper and again be ignored by the likes of France as were the Maastricht criteria.

Unless the EU went Das Europareich a.k.a. New World Order on its member states and the EU budget plus EU dictated taxation would supercede individual national budget policy and taxation the monetary union will still be doomed to fail. Really the current EU attempts at solving this won't do much. A true fiscal union where the relationships between the EU and national budgets are the same as say between the German federal budget and the budgets of individual lands is the only solution but nobody will agree to that. Because as you can guess it means Germany will run the show with French support while the other member states won't have much to say.

United Europe yes, European superstate NO.

Centralisation has never worked - it only corrupts the state and the moral, as we already see in the USA (too much power exerted from DC). The EU must not become another US.

It can't, it won't. Europe's strength is it's diversity. But for some reason the Elites want Europe to become another United States. They don't understand that the US is one culture coast to coast, with one financial system. Since 1900 Europe has been hellbent on destroying itself. They couldn't do it through warfare maybe they'll succeed with finance. Poland should bail on the whole mess and become truly independent like Norway, Switzerland and Russia. Just now I am reading in the Polish press that Moody's have downgraded the Polish Banks, unemployment is rising and everybody's working for pennies. Not a good scenario. If Poland isn't careful they can become another Greece.

Sorry Rich, I can't confirm it. If you speak English, you can do quite well in Poland. I agree, if you're dealing with older Poles, you're lost but most of the young Poles learn it at school and it's pretty easy to make friends with them if you're open to it. Anyways, this is what I've experienced in Poland. It's probably different from case to case.

Except Norway, Switzerland and Russia aren't independent at all. Norway is part of the EEA, Switzerland has signed many treaties with the EU (and was more or less told to adopt Schengen and Dublin or face those favourable trade/finance treaties being torn up), Russia is hugely dependent on the EU in terms of oil/gas sales. Poland leaving wouldn't change anything but a return to 4 hour delays on the border and less mobility for her people.


How? Poland has a constitutional debt limit of 60% of GDP - and they aren't known for falsifying records. It's just ever so slightly different to the Greek levels of debt.


Well yes, a single market for labour, products and services is the end goal. No harm in that - it means people can live and work freely wherever they want under one set of common rules.


Hardly. Been reading freepl.info too much?

The Consequences of Austerity Policies in Portugal: library.fes.de/pdf-files/id-moe/09311.pdf

How high does the unemployment have to actually rise and how far must the economy crash, until the reality of the ideologues of austerity have taught Europe a lesson? So high that the ideologues of austerity will be torn apart by a hungry mob, of course.

To admit a mistake, would open them to huge lawsuits for the life tragedies that they have created.

Politicians are not learning animals. So something really really bad has to happen till those lying fvckers realize they were wrong, but even worse then, the very same people will come forward and present themselves as the saviours.

Kinda like being an arsonist and firefighter at the same time.

Article on immigration to Poland by the Spanish and other nationals

presseurop.eu/en/content/article/3869241-new-promised-land

Polish government under pressure as thousands protest over unemployment

euronews.com/2013/09/15/polish-government-under-pressure-as-thousands-protest-over-unemployment/

Poland's providing the right to Armenians to work in this country from 1 January 2014 without a work permit for six months

news.az/articles/commentary/85818

Small Christian country far away, on the edge of Europe. There should not be any complaints, except of traditional why to let foreigners work in Poland, when unemployment is so high.