Refugees and asylum seekers in Poland

The Polish asylum system has only been developing for fewer than thirty years, since it was only in December 1991 that Poland signed the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. While Poland welcomed refugees in the communist era from Greece (1948 56) and Chile (1973), the total number amounted to a mere 20,000 individuals. Since 1992, there was a consistent, albeit insignificant, inflow of asylum seekers reaching almost

Figure 6.1 Number of work permits and declarations on entrusting work to a foreigner, issued between 2003 and 2018⁴

Based on: MoF 2019a; MoF 2019b

15,000 applicants in 2013. However, most of them did not stay in Poland and ended up going to other Western European countries. Few received any form of international protection. In the 1990s, only 100 individuals received protection annually, around 2,500 people annually between 2005 and 2009, and since 2010 only a few hundred people per year (see Figure 6.2). Generally speaking, the Polish asylum system is not very friendly towards asylum seekers. The chances of obtaining any form of protection are low, e.g. between 2011 and 2016 only 2 percent of applicants received refugee status, the lowest recognition rate in the entire EU. Meanwhile, refusal to be granted international protection comes with serious consequences - the foreigner must leave Poland and is often barred from entering the EU for several years.

The history of asylum in Poland can be divided into two periods. During the 1990s, individuals seeking protection came mainly from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 2000, the biggest number of asylum seekers have been Russian citizens of Chechen nationality, of which over 100,000 came to Poland. Tellingly and oddly, the Polish asylum system has not registered a big number of Syrians. They began arriving in Poland after 2011 and by the end of 2018 represented only 889 individuals. However, most of the Syrians who stayed in Poland received refugee status. This cannot be said of the Chechens, for whom obtaining refugee status is nearly impossible. Instead, the Chechens might receive other forms of international protection such as subsidiary protection or humanitarian stay.

Figure 6.2 Number of foreigners, who apply for international protection and who were granted any form of international protection in Poland 1992-2018

Based on: OF 2019

In recent years, however, even these forms have been granted to Chechens exceptionally rarely. For instance, in 2018, only nine people were granted refugee status in Poland and 70 individuals obtained subsidiary protection.

Very few Ukrainians decided to apply for international protection in Poland, mostly residents of the Crimea and the Donbas region (Duvell & Lapshyna 2015; Szczepanik & Tylec 2016). In the five years from 2014 to 2018, Ukrainians submitted 7,066 asylum applications, with 65 percent submitted in 2014 and 2015, and less than 7 percent in 2018. Only 743 Ukrainians were granted some form of international protection, mainly subsidiary protection. The relatively low number of Ukrainian asylum seekers in Poland is a consequence of an assumption demonstrated by many EU states that Ukrainians should seek support in their home country since they are entitled to internally displaced persons’ status based on the ‘internal flight alternative.’ Over 1.6 million Ukrainians have internally displaced persons’ status, but their situation is so dire that they have no alternative but to emigrate (Krakhmalova 2018).