Polish Response to Irregular Migration in Recent Years

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to examine the situation at the Polish borders, especially at the eastern border which is the external border of the EU. Poland’s border is 3,500 km long. 1,580 km is the Polish section of the external European Union border. The paper presents the Polish position on European migration maps in recent years. The author focuses on the dimension of irregular migration based on data for illegal border crossings from 2014 to 2018. Those data are compared with situations of the other EU external borders. The author also refers to the number of asylum requests in Poland to present the scale of the phenomenon and demonstrate why Poland rejects so many requests. Those statistical data were analyzed in relation to the Polish governments’ position against immigrant quotas. This position is politically justified by having a specific immigration situation due to a long border with Ukraine, a neighboring country with an unstable political situation that influences both irregular and legal migration. The author compares the government’s position with the real situation and evaluates the existence of any possible threat to border security. As the Polish policy is changing a lot in the recent years the author also presents the legal reaction to the so-called “migration crisis”.