PiS: None of these eight Muslim countries got a Polish work visa. MFA: not true

On Friday, June 23, Law and Justice organized press conferenceattended by party spokesman Rafał Bochenek, government spokesman Piotr Muller, Sovereign Poland MEP Patryk Jaki and deputy minister of internal affairs and administration Bartosz Grodecki. One of the main topics was the issue of migrants, including those from Muslim countries. Patryk Jaki said that after Jarosław Kaczyński submitted the idea organizing a referendum on the relocation of immigrants “There are regular lies and manipulations about this issue in the public space.”

One of the lies mentioned by Patryk Jaki and disseminated in his opinion, m. by Donald Tusk is the claim that the PiS government has agreed to accept over 130,000 migrants from Muslim countries. During the MEP’s speech, a graphic was displayed on the screen behind his back published later also on social media with the comment: “The opposition is lying to the public again, but the facts are completely different.”

The illustration was titled: “Number of migrants who received work visas in Poland in 2022”. On the left is a black and white bar chart with flags and country names and numbers, e.g. 33,373 for Uzbekistan, 25,004 for Turkey, and 216 for Syria. This graph has been marked with a red inscription: “Fake news of Platforma Obywatelska”. On the right, it reads: “None of the residents of the countries from which illegal migrants come to Europe (Syria, Iran, Iraq) has received a Polish work visa.” Listed below are the last eight countries in the chart on the left: Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Iran, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. The number zero next to the names of these countries is to clearly indicate that their inhabitants did not receive Polish work visas in 2022.

The graphics itself and the lack of work visas for citizens of “Muslim countries” were discussed at the aforementioned conference by the Deputy Minister of the Interior and Administration, Bartosz Grodecki. “A few words about the graphics that have been circulating the web for several days, especially in social media, and the data from them are incorrectly interpreted, which leads to false conclusions drawn from them,” the deputy minister began the statement. “On the right side of the graphic you can see the number of work visas, i.e. residence titles issued by Polish consuls, legally and securely checked, for citizens of countries who need such work visas to come to Poland” – he added and then stated:

Therefore, we explain what the data on the left side of the illustration shows and what data on work visas for residents of selected countries were provided to us by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The chart visible on the left side of the graphic created by PiS was already made available by the opposition party in February, but it was not the Civic Platform, but the Confederation. 14th of February appeared on the account of the National Movement, which is part of it. At that time, the data source was given: the Labor Market Department of the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy and it was written that these are data on “number of work permits for foreigners issued in 2022(emphasis added).

Next day graphics data appeared also on the official account of the Confederation, which wrote that “The PiS government has opened Poland to Muslim immigrants. Only in the last year it allowed over 136,000 Muslims to work in Poland.”

This number was repeated later by Donald Tusk. For example, during his speech in Kłodzko on June 19 he spoke: “They [PiS] they’re having a big referendum on the two thousand [migrantów]that no one wants to send us here by force, and last year alone they brought 135,000 from Muslim countries. Not two thousand, not 30 thousand, 135 thousand people [sprowadzili] here to Poland.

Let’s be clear: the number 135,000, 135,774 to be exact, comes from data published by the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy on the Public Employment Services Portal. It is number of work permits issued in 2022 to citizens of 20 countries: Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kosovo, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The National Movement and the Confederation recognized them as Muslim countries, i.e. countries where the dominant religion is Islam. In total, exactly 365,490 work permits were issued to citizens of 141 countries.

A work permit is different from a work visa. A work permit for a foreigner in Poland is issued by voivodship offices, i.e. voivodes. Polish consulates or consular sections of Polish embassies in the foreigners’ countries of origin are responsible for work visas. A work permit legalizes the employment of a foreigner in Poland, while a visa allows him to cross the border and legalizes his stay in the country.

As written on government website Biznes.gov.pl, visas typically intended for work in the territory of Poland are visas with the designation 05a (“to perform work on the basis of a declaration of entrusting work to a foreigner”), 05b (“to perform seasonal work”) and 06 ( “in order to perform work that is not covered by the above visas, i.e. most often on the basis of a work permit”). At the same time, it was added that “these visa designations are not the only ones that allow a foreigner to work legally in the territory of Poland”, because each C-type Schengen visa and D-type national visa entitles it (except for tourist visas and visas issued for the purpose of using temporary protection). ).

On the government website, however, it was emphasized that the condition for taking up work by the holder of any visa is “obtaining the appropriate document legalizing work“, i.e. work permits. The same page also states that “a foreigner will receive a visa on the basis of a work permita certificate of entry of an application for a seasonal work permit in the register of applications or an employer’s statement on entrusting work to a foreigner, entered in the register of statements by the poviat labor office” (author’s own bold).

Number of work permits issued to citizens Muslim countries, of which there were 135,000 last year, it is therefore not equal to the number of work visas issued. On the other hand, PiS claims in its graphic that it has not issued a single such visa to citizens of eight Muslim countries. We asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about it.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has data on the number of visas broken down by their purpose, as it supervises consular and diplomatic posts that issue these visas to foreigners. So we asked the ministry how many work visas were issued to residents of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Nigeria, Syria and Tunisia in 2022 – these are the same countries where zero was entered in the graphic presented and published by PiS.

In response from June 27, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed that such work visas were issued in 2022 586. The largest number of inhabitants of Egypt (314), Iran (68) and Jordan (51). The detailed list is as follows:

About three countries “from which illegal migrants come to Europe” – Syria, Iran and Iraq – PiS wrote on the graphic that none of their residents received a Polish work visa. However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that there were a total of them 112: 68 for Iranian residents, 36 for Syrian residents and 8 for Iraqi residents.

According to the data of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, almost 10.7 thousand visas were issued to residents of the eight Muslim countries mentioned above in 2022. Work visas therefore accounted for eight percent of the total.