Poles plump for life abroad

“The million won’t return”, Tygodnik Powszechny warns on its front page, citing Central Statistical Office data according to which some 1.1 million Poles have chosen to live abroad. According to the study, half of these emigrants have been based outside Poland for more than a year and do not intend to return.

“We can now regard the myth of the temporary nature of post-accession Polish emigration as refuted. The last census has confirmed that we are dealing with the biggest population loss in postwar history”, notes Krystyna Iglicka, a demographer at Warsaw’s Centre for International Relations.

According to the Catholic weekly, this means that Poland’s migration policy and campaigns encouraging emigrants to return have totally failed. “We are dealing with population and workforce drain and in twenty years’ time we’re going to be the EU’s oldest society, which mass emigration will make a major contribution to”, laments Iglicka.