Poles Go Home to Greener Pastures
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Aneta Tatulinska has no regrets about being back in Poland after three years in Britain, where she worked as a waitress, nanny and cleaner.
Now an accountant and finishing a business degree in Warsaw, she came home a year ago after finding it hard to make a career in Britain.
“I hadn’t gone to university to serve coffee and make a little bit more money,” she says. “I think the UK is best for people who have no prospects in Poland.”
More and more Poles who moved to west European countries after Poland joined the EU in 2004 are coming to the same conclusion. There are no firm numbers on the flow of migrants in a borderless Europe where many people work seasonally, returning frequently to Poland by bus or cheap airline. But anecdotal evidence suggests the outflow is diminishing and people are starting to come home.
Krzysztof Bieniek, who owns a Warsaw construction company, says it is getting easier to hire new workers. This week he is meeting two of his former workers who had moved to Germany, but are now back in Poland and hoping for a job.
The wave of migration began when about a fifth of Polish workers were without jobs and Polish salaries were far lower than in western Europe. Over the last couple of years, however, official unemployment has dropped to 11.5 per cent, while the true rate is probably much lower.
Pay packets are fatter—salaries rose in February at an annual rate of 12.8 per cent. The zloty has also risen sharply against both the pound and the euro, while Poland’s economy is also expanding much more strongly, with growth of 5.5 per cent expected this year.
“The most important cause of returns is the changing situation in both countries,” says Pawel Kaczmarek, who studies migration at the University of Warsaw.
Finally, many Poles, like Ms Tatulinska, found it was easy to get low paid, entry-level jobs in Britain, but much more difficult to break into professional work where the pay would be enough to contend with the high living costs of British cities. They are finding it much easier to get on the career ladder back home. “I say to our recruits, ‘Stay and work in Poland and in a few years the people who’ve gone to work in England will be back and they’ll be working for you,’” said Pawel Lobejko of Accenture, the consultancy, at a conference on labour migration.
(Posted on April 3, 2008)
Comments
One of the finest men I’ve known in my long life was a Polish dentist, a son of an immigrant Polish cleaning woman. His mother worked until she was literally worn out to send her only son to dental school. She would have rather died than accept welfare/public assistance.
I’m not particularly sanguine about the future of formerly Great Britain, but Poland is another story. The people still have a healthy pride in their country and national identity. God bless Poland.
Posted by Sardonicus at 6:56 PM on April 3
Too bad this article wasn’t about Indian H-1Bs returning home without being able to find jobs; instead, it’s the poor American IT worker that’s returning to their homes dejected.
Posted by at 9:29 PM on April 3
Time to pull the Irish bait-and-switch on the Poles - Poland right now is Ireland in 1997. Rev up the economy, get the expats back home, wrangle them into all the EU treaties, then open the third-world floodgates onto Warsaw and Krakow (if it isn’t underway already). The new Polish government will play along. Very shortly, I expect to see stories about Chinese and Bolivian laborers flooding into the country posted on this website.
I hope I am wrong, but nothing in the past 50 years makes me think it will turn out otherwise.
Posted by Dave at 9:40 PM on April 3
There are quite a few Poles living in Worcestershire and those I have spoken to say two things.
Firstly they are here for the jobs/money.
Secondly they have no intention of staying here as they are appalled by the number of blacks and asians and pine for their own country with its culture, homogeneity and low crime.
Once their money needs are satisfied they head back to Poland.
It seems that the “multicultural”, “diverse” and “vibrant” Britain is just not their cup of tea.
Posted by Geoff at 4:58 AM on April 4
Perhaps wages are higher in Britain, but when everything is taken into consideration such as an extremely high cost of living, high taxes, rampant crime and insalubrious neighborhoods, bad schools, bad public transport and hospitals etc, then the equation has probably slipped in Poland’s favor, especially now that the pound has plunged in value against the zloty.
Posted by Kenelm Digby at 6:24 AM on April 4
I am not a betting man but if I were I would have thought long and hard about which nations/countries would be crippled and which would be the winners a decade from now. Those in decline definitely the “free world countries” and those on the up the examples of Poland, Serbia and others with long histories of being surpressed and where individuals have been denied the opportunities to be all that they can be.
Posted by Commando at 7:14 AM on April 4
Poland seems to be becoming an attractive place.
Have the decades of Communist oppression given Poles something to fight against; a ‘never again’ frame of mind? Poland has known invasion, dissolution and rebuilding of their country over the centuries so they have a history of fighting for their nationhood and I’ve noticed that the PC Brigade tends not to attack Polish national pride with the same raging condemnation that a White Briton complaining about losing nationhood does.
Britain and the rest of the West have only been successful and prosperous, and in the new climate of Political Correctness the successful are not permitted to complain, only to fail; hence the kowtowing to any minority gripe.
Arc.
Posted by Arcadian at 11:39 AM on April 4
The good news is Poland is having a baby boom but the bad new is the US will soon have a military base there and American troops there. Plus they’re going to be training the Polish military. And I’m sure it won’t be 100% white American men over there.
Posted by RealityCheck at 1:59 PM on April 4
One of my ex-bosses was an ethnic Pole, and that man was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had.
My only complaint about Poland and its people is that they should be just a bit farther east. At least the Poles didn’t drastically rename German cities. Danzig is now Gdansk. Breslau is now Wrockaw. Konigsberg might as well be Harare for all the name “Kaliningrad” means to anyone.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 3:01 PM on April 4
The British should have welcomed the Poles with open arms. Here was a group of people who could be genetically absorbed without cultural, social and religous problems. The descendents of the Ellis Island era Poles are now rock-solid English speaking White Americans. They would have been an investment in the future of the White community in Britain. Also the Poles haven’t been brainwashed with political correctness.
Posted by at 12:00 AM on April 5
“My only complaint about Poland and its people is that they should be just a bit farther east. At least the Poles didn’t drastically rename German cities. Danzig is now Gdansk. Breslau is now Wrockaw. Konigsberg might as well be Harare for all the name “Kaliningrad” means to anyone.”
In response to this. Poland did not choose to be where it is. After WW2, the Allies took Eastern Poland and gave it to Russia and gave poland eastern Germany. So, Originally Poland was further East before WW2. Why can’t Poland rename the cities, they are in Poland after all now? Poland received those cities as compensation for 10 million dead by Germany during ww2.
Posted by at 3:55 AM on April 5
For the record, Poland lost overall 1/3 of her pre-WWII territory so any territory “given to her” still put her at a territory disadvantage. Its shameful considering Poland was supposed to be an ally of the West. But of course the mass media glosses over this.
Posted by Max 500 at 5:09 AM on April 6