The phenomenon of mass-migration is arguably older and more firmly entrenched in France than anywhere else in Europe. Asked in 1994 whether some recent tightening of asylum and family-reunification statutes might prove effective, Jean Raspail, author of the notorious, prescient novel The Camp of the Saints, replied, “No. It is impossible to do anything. It’s too late. There have been mass movements of people already and there are now too many to send back.”
In Germany, which experiences near-daily national reckonings over migration issues, football star Toni Kroos stated he would not return to his homeland after his playing career and would fear his daughter going out at night in a large German city. Though the issue has achieved unprecedented prominence in Germany, it is hardly more novel there than in France. In his 2009 book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, Christopher Caldwell noted there were already 2.6 million foreign ‘guest workers’ in West Germany by 1973 (incidentally, the year Raspail’s Camp was published). Thus, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit over one million migrants was not the advent of Germany’s problems, and it might not even have been the watershed moment.
Virtually every country in Western Europe features similar realities, yet anti-migration policy achievements have been modest. It is a fine depiction of the boiling-frog syndrome: because European lives only slightly worsen from one year to the next, citizens are loath to act.
Behind the former Iron Curtain, there is no such migration history. Cognizant of Western Europe’s experiences, Central and Eastern Europeans (including many on the political Left) are overwhelmingly opposed to inward migration. As the EU’s newer members increasingly recognize, policy reality can be entirely unaccountable to the will of the people.
Poles were outraged when, in June of 2024, a German police van deposited a Middle Eastern family in a parking lot across the Polish border without notifying Polish officials. The incident generated a diplomatic row and cast a lens on the frequency of these German ‘pushbacks.’ In another episode that week, German police dropped six African men across the border, this time after notifying Polish authorities. According to journalist Aleksandra Fedorska, “Since the beginning of the year, officials from Germany have sent back to Poland over 3,500 migrants.” Some of these reportedly never crossed the Polish-German frontier, having arrived in Germany via other routes.
The Polish Border Guard is stretched thin on the western border, as resources are desperately needed on the eastern border with Belarus, to which the Belarusian regime has been ferrying Middle Eastern and African migrants for years in a form of hybrid warfare (Moscow is certainly involved in the proceedings). The posting is thankless: Sgt. Mateusz Sitek, a 21-year-old Border Guard officer, succumbed to his wounds last month after a migrant stabbed him through a fence. Despite these conditions, military police arrested three border guardsmen for firing warning shots into the air and ground to deter aggressive migrants. “This is a shocking case, considering the fact that our soldiers were recently repeatedly attacked by aggressors from the Belarus side,” said President Andrzej Duda.
A recent Ipsos poll suggests 67% of Poles believe migrants should be repelled at the Belarusian border, and those who manage to cross should be returned to Belarus; only 19% believe their asylum claims should be processed in Poland. Interestingly, voters of the Left alliance are evenly split on this question, and voters of all other parties strongly support border-protection measures. Some establishment media called the poll results “shocking.”
Though public opinion is united, a small number of activists enjoy more agency than the silent majority. Activist groups like Podlaskie OPH operate along the Belarusian frontier and actively usher migrants into Poland. Group chats instruct migrants where to cross and where to go after arriving in Poland. Taxis funded by NGOs busily ferry migrants to legal offices that will process their asylum claims. Soon after taking power late last year, Marshal of the Sejm (chair of the lower house of the Polish Parliament) Szymon Hołownia posed for a photo with newly arrived migrants and NGO activists in parliament.
Activists have also encouraged migrants to seek legal compensation from the Polish state. In recent cases, regional courts ruled in favor of an Afghan and an Ethiopian, both of whom injured themselves after falling from border barriers, and against the Polish Border Guard. The activist-backed illegal-entrants can now pursue additional civil cases against the state.
In the political sphere, the pro-migration Left has thus far talked less brazenly than its counterparts in the United States, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. Its arguments meekly posit that globalism is inevitable, and, as Left alliance parliamentarian Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk recently asserted, “the Polish job market needs hands to work, and it also needs migrants.” Thus, “Diversity is our strength” is not a tenable political slogan—for now.
Award-winning filmmaker Agnieszka Holland released her election-year film Green Border to cultivate sympathy for the interlopers at the Belarusian frontier. In one entirely fictional scene, a Polish Border Guard officer hands a migrant a thermos full of water contaminated with shards of broken glass. The Vatican, still an important voice in Polish society, dutifully screened the film before last year’s parliamentary elections.
Present-day scenes from Polish cities, which were unthinkable a few short years ago, seem like they might have been conjured for cinema. Recently, in Warsaw, an African man attempted to pick the lock of a parked car, then climbed and jumped on top of others, and eventually assaulted a delivery driver on a motorized scooter. “Until recently, such scenes could only be seen in the countries of Western Europe,” wrote one publication. The culprit was expected to be released after charges were registered, but the capacity to deport him is uncertain. In Poznań, nearby inhabitants panicked when a shirtless African man brandished a machete and yelled wildly outside an apartment block. In Czerlonka, near the Belarusian border, migrants continuously occupy the bus stop; locals avoid walking the streets at night and fear what might happen when they send their children to wait for the school bus.
Perhaps the most shocking recent development was seen in the circulation of a video showing a naked African man defecating in the bathing area of a Katowice city park. Local authorities closed the area to swimmers after tests revealed the presence of E. coli bacteria made the water unsafe. It is unclear whether those events are connected, but footage of the foul act rocked Polish political discourse. “Thanks to the current government, it’s getting really European in our country,” chided one commentator.
Political realities are often more complex than they seem at first glance. Reminted Prime Minister Donald Tusk is content to make token gestures to the anti-migration electorate while giving his close Brussels allies most of what they ask. Brussels, in turn, happily allows him to walk this tightrope. They remember how Tusk’s party lost emphatically in 2015, after consenting to the EU’s migrant-redistribution plan earlier in that same year. The recently ousted conservative Law & Justice (PiS) party promoted anti-migration policies and ensured strict measures against the onslaught at the Belarusian border, but it oversaw unprecedented levels of legal, economic migration from places like Asia and Africa. One foreign-ministry official attempted suicide after a corrupt cash-for-visa scheme in Africa was discovered shortly before last year’s elections. Consequently, many voters dismayed at the shifting fortunes of Polish cities believe that PiS is to blame.
Politicians of all stripes have relied on the theory that migrants arriving on Polish territory will continue to a wealthier country like Germany. This might be changing, too. Suddenly, there are economic pull factors. Poland has been an economic success story over the last two decades, and its living standards are quickly converging with those of Western Europe. Furthermore, the European Union’s recent migration pact stipulates that all countries pay similar financial benefits to arriving migrants; those euros stretch further in Poland than in Germany. According to PiS politician and former EU parliamentarian Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, the EU-mandated benefits will represent “a higher standard of living and housing than the Polish average wage. All of this will take place at our expense, because there are no EU funds for it. It will be Poland that will have to fund all this.”
It seems Poles recognize this train wreck happening in real time. Alas, there’s more than one way to boil a frog, and there is little evidence that the anti-migration Polish populace can do much to stop these abuses.
