Star Metro - Poland debates migrants ahead of general election

The governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has again taken up a "cause that paid dividends at the general election in 2015, when it exploited fear of the other", sociologist Stanislaw Mocek told AFP.

This time around, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki used the occasion of the French riots to lay out his anti-migration stance and justify his firm opposition to an EU asylum reform.

"Put these two images together: that of Paris suburbs today, with big riots, the looting of stores, broken windows, cars on fire", against "calm Polish towns", he said.

"The image that we are defending is probably obvious: Poland has chosen security, peace and public order."

The EU reform aims to share the hosting of asylum seekers across member countries, with those who refuse having to pay money to the ones that take in migrants.

The nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland have opposed the plan.

- Referendum -

The PiS party recently proposed holding a referendum on the question of welcoming refugees alongside the staging of national elections.

Mocek said the party's new programme of social benefits had failed to materially improve its popularity so the leadership was "returning to the basest instincts of society".

The electoral campaign tactic comes at a time when nearly three-quarters of Poles say they are opposed to forced relocations of migrants.

The opposition has denounced the "hypocrisy" of the government, which presents itself as the country's defender against an "open-door" migration policy while bringing in foreign workers to boost the workforce.

- 'Inconsistency' -

"There is flagrant inconsistency between these policies, that of the electoral campaign and the other that responds to real life" and the economy, Mocek said.

According to Maciej Witucki, president of the employers' organisation Lewiatan, "our economy and our companies won't manage without foreign workers".

"Over the course of 10 years, the labour market lost more than 2.2 million people of working age" because of an ageing society and lower birth rate, he told the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Donald Tusk, the head of the main opposition party, denounced the government's "sick logic" after it unveiled a project that he said would pave the way for "at least 400,000 visa requests coming mainly from Asian and African countries".

The government denied these figures but abandoned the project which, according to PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, was an "administrative error".

- No strategy -

Morawiecki called on the opposition to back the government's position but the main centrist and leftist parties boycotted his proposed talks.

While Poles are opposed to taking in migrants from outside Europe, they threw their doors wide open for Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion last year.

Around one million Ukrainians continue to live in Poland where they benefit from special refugee status.

Yet, at the same time, Poland has built walls along its borders with Belarus and Russia in response to a migrant influx into the EU.

The West has accused Belarus of having orchestrated it with main ally Russia to destabilise the region -- a claim rejected by Minsk.

According to rights activists and several court cases, Poland is using pushbacks at the border with Belarus and refusing migrants the right to ask for asylum.

The country has "no migration strategy, which... may bring about economic and social consequences," Witucki said, as Poland heads into election season.

A.Harris--SMC