The first thought that many readers may have at the beginning of reading the MyVisa blog is ‘ What is all the fuss about?’. Does it make any sense to keep a blog about foreigners when we can talk about Covid, politics, children, lifestyle, books, travel or cooking – in a word, about something that has a significant meaning in everyone’s life? Well, Dear Readers: the numbers speak for themselves: in the pandemic year 2020, more than 460,000 people have had valid residence permit and it must be remembered that these are official data, not taking into account temporary movements of people within the Schengen area. In other words, no one knows exactly how many foreigners have decided to stay longer in Poland but we do know that this number is growing year by year. According to the official data of the Office for Foreigners, the biggest community are Ukrainians (245,000), then Belarusians (29,000), Germans (20,000), Russians (13,000), followed by the Vietnamese and Indian citizens (10,000 each) and another nations, i.e. Georgians, Chinese, Koreans, Turkish people and others. But according to unofficial data, there are over a million Ukrainian citizens alone! Employees from abroad were not even scared by the coronavirus and despite the initial outflow and returns to their homeland, 75% of them decided to stay in Poland and use the possibility of automatic extension of their work and residence permits. Moreover, despite temporary restrictions in air and land traffic, there is a significant number of workers who decided to come to Poland right in the middle of the pandemic. In other words, as in many countries, all the virus-issues have become commonplace and both the companies and the employees want to learn to live and work in new reality.
What else do we know about foreigners in Poland? Quite a lot. Most of them live in the Mazowieckie, Małopolskie, Wielkopolskie and Śląskie voivodships. They are mainly young people, before the age of 40, who came to Poland in search of better employment conditions than in their home countries. Despite the pandemic turmoil the demand for their work is still very high and the expected rebound after subsequent lockdowns will only intensify this phenomenon. Employees from abroad are present in almost every sector of industry but the production sector definitely dominates the service sector. On the one hand, they are low-skilled workers working on the so-called ‘tape’ but on the other hand, these are also employees with narrow specializations, filling the gap left by Polish professionals who moved to Western Europe after Poland’s accession to the EU. Contrary to appearances, an increasing number of foreigners also appear in IT, shared service centers, beauty services, trade and many others. They all share a strong motivation and willingness to work long and hard to get their pay up to a level where they could make a decent living. The vast majority of them is satisfied with own situation – 90% of respondents who came to Poland after the pandemic have started is satisfied with this decision. Only 2% of the respondents regret it.
As, Dear Reader, you can see, the issue of foreigners in Poland is not an invention, a whim or a free mental construct. It is a real phenomenon that we meet at every step, and it’s good! There is only one truth – nature abhors a vacuum. So pandemic or non-pandemic, the economy is going its own way and will slowly gather pace again. This, in turn, will not be possible without foreign workers, because the native ones are simply lacking. Therefore, we invite you to read about the problems of these communities, their living and working conditions, Poland’s policy towards these groups and many, many other issues. So it will be a little funny, a little scary and sometimes serious.
Photo: Timon Studler by Unsplash
