The number of foreigners registered as working in Poland has risen 35% in the space of a year, as the country continues to experience levels of immigration unprecedented in its history and among the highest in the European Union.
At the end of June this year, 818,772 foreigners were registered in the country’s social insurance system (ZUS), an increase of more than a third from the same point in 2020, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP). Ukrainians, numbering 603,481, made up almost three quarters of the total.
The actual number of immigrants – many of whom are not registered with ZUS – is believed to be even higher. The government estimated that, by the end of 2019, there were over two million foreigners living in Poland, making up around 5% of the population. Numbers have increased since then, despite the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the number of foreign students enrolled at Polish universities has also reached a record level of 82,500, an increase of 4,000 since last year, reports Rzeczpospolita. The majority of them are from Ukraine and Belarus.
“The interest of foreign students is greater compared to last year’s recruitment. We notice an increase of about 10%,” said Adam Koprowski, a spokesman for the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, which this year was ranked as Poland’s top higher education establishment.
At the University of Zielona Góra, the figure is even higher, at 20%, spokeswoman Ewa Sapeńko told Rzeczpospolita. Foreign students have mostly been coming from Ukraine and Belarus, with the most popular degree subjects being medicine, management, IT, and international relations.
Poland has issued more first residence permits to immigrants from outside the EU than any other member state for the last three years in a row, according to Eurostat data.
While those figures only go up to the end of 2019, Poland’s Office for Foreigners reported in May this year that the number of foreigners with residence permits had risen by 57,000 (over 13%) since the start of 2020.
Main image credit: Yehor Tulinov/Unsplash
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
