Ukrainians are welcomed with open arms in Poland

For Ukrainian refugees in Poland, the magic word these days is “PESEL”. It is the abbreviation of the Polish social security number. The Polish government has promised all war refugees from neighboring Ukraine a stay of up to 180 days and access to the labor market, health system and social benefits. All this is made possible by PESEL. The largest registration table where refugees can apply for a PESEL number has been since Saturday (March 19th) at the National Stadium in Warsaw.

Long queues had formed there the day before. Hot tea thermoses were made available at the stadium gate. “I will wait here until needed. “I need a work permit, I need to find a job and as soon as possible,” Victoria, 24, told DW.

The next morning, around 9 am, the IT specialist from Kiev manages to enter the stadium. At night, she lined up with her friends and meanwhile slept in the car in the large parking lot opposite the stadium. She is expected to receive her PESEL number within a few days. Those arriving at the stadium after 7 a.m. had no chance of being served the same day. The volunteers had prepared purple bracelets and distributed them to those who had their turn guaranteed the next day.

Challenge for the Polish administration

More than two million Ukrainian refugees are currently in Poland. On Wednesday and Thursday, the first days of the census operation, 123 thousand of them were registered. Additional check-in points – such as the one at the national stadium – and check-in buses going to refugee camps should speed up the operation. The municipal and communal services that usually assign social security numbers are overloaded.

In the Polish city of Przemysl, near the border with Ukraine, the municipal office is working at full capacity, but with only four fingerprinting machines and seven civil servants in total – the waiting times are long here as well. Oxana Kolesnyk worked as a bank clerk. “I do not speak Polish and it will probably not be possible to work in a bank – I expect that. “But I have to find a job quickly to secure my and my son’s livelihood,” she said. When she left, she received her passport, which facilitates formalities. For people fleeing the war without identity documents, the procedures are longer. They too are welcome in Poland, although their identities cannot be fully verified.

Uncertainty in the new country

The special law recently passed by Parliament guarantees people who have left the country access to the labor market, health care and social benefits, including monthly family payments of 110 euros per child. Newcomers receive 70 euros as welcome compensation, after which they have to organize to support themselves. A special law further guarantees Polish citizens that Ukrainians expect the equivalent of 9 euros per day for spending.

Alexandra Stefaniv from Lviv sits in the waiting room, her Polish relative Leon Bortnik helps her with her application. The logistics entrepreneur from Przemysl takes care of his Ukrainian parents in a recently inherited apartment, which until now was still empty. “Suddenly I got a call from my mother’s sister, who lives in Ukraine. She asked me if I would welcome her and her future family. “There is only one good answer to that,” Bortnik told DW.

He wants to help Alexandra find work, he knows a lot of people in the area. For this 46-year-old woman, her future is a question mark. “I’m lost, I have no idea what I’m going to do in Poland. Do I have to look for work? “But I still hope the war ends soon and I can go home,” she said. Her husband remained in Lviv, and she herself had never planned to emigrate from Ukraine.

The great migratory wave – a recent phenomenon

3.3 million Ukrainians have emigrated since the beginning of the war, many of them to Poland. Prior to that, Poland, with a population of 38 million, had more than one million Ukrainian immigrants, who had fled their country since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

In 2021, 90% of respondents in a survey by the Center for Research on Prejudice at the University of Warsaw said they accept Ukrainians as colleagues and neighbors. In recent decades, immigrants to Poland were a small part of society. Apart from Ukrainian immigrants since 2014, there is no group of migrants of comparable size.

Compared to other EU countries, Poland is closed to immigrants. The current wave of refugees is a completely new phenomenon. After more than three weeks of mutual aid, during which Ukrainian war refugees were welcomed with open arms, the question of how the already overburdened social and health care system will serve millions of other people is increasingly being asked in the media. In some parent councils, dissatisfaction with the prospect of overcrowding in school classrooms is growing.

Challenged Polish society

Dr. Agnieszka Lada-Konefal, Deputy Director of the German Institute of Poland in Darmstadt, talks about a major challenge for the administration and society, which will surely transform the country. “Poles have to learn to live with people who are a little different.

“Many Poles have had this experience in recent years, even with the Ukrainians, and this experience has been positive,” she told DW. This also applies to school students, who will have classmates from different languages ​​and cultures, but also with difficult war experiences. ” Children and young people will need to agree to this. They will have to learn to live with others, to open up. “It means development.”

But some sections of society may feel overwhelmed by the huge wave of migration. “It is difficult to say whether he will be able to accept this and learn to live with it, if it is high and the crisis and the war last for a long time.” Political science warns that the wave of migration from Ukraine could be used by populists to “spread hatred and disgust” ./ DW

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