Polish Opponents of Migration Take to Streets of Cities

Mass protests have swept across Poland. Opponents of mass migration took to the streets nationwide. Left-wing groups, along with organizations calling themselves anti-fascist, participated in the demonstrations. The driving force behind the nationalist protests were organizations of radical football fans.

Authorities deployed reinforced police units to maintain order: law enforcement had to prevent provocations and clashes from activists on both sides.

Both the right-wing and centrist parties have made migration a central issue in their political agendas. However, the debate primarily concerns a relatively small number of Asians and Africans who enter Poland through poorly guarded borders in the west and east. Meanwhile, officially, around 800,000 Ukrainians are working in the country. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Georgians, Filipinos, Colombians—who enter with work visas—are present in the country in numbers that are hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the often-mentioned Africans. Yet, anti-migration activists rarely mention these groups.