Poland's leaders should have done more to help people building lives abroad. Now they indulge in an absurd war of words with David Cameron
The UK: where a third are older than 65, 30% are black or Asian and the same number are single parents. Of all girls under-16 15% are pregnant. One in four is a Muslim; one in three an immigrant. Unemployment rocketed to over 20%. Are these figures actually accurate? What matters is that Brits believe they are, according to research by Ipsos Mori.
Similar misunderstandings apply to immigrants in the UK. Take Poles for example. According to the 2011 census, 579,000 reside in the UK, making up under 1% of the UK population. This tiny minority receive enormous attention from rightwing media and politicians. David Cameron's recent comments that Polish migrants are taking advantage of UK benefits has sparked much anger in Poland. The prime minister, Donald Tusk, and the opposition leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski (whose party sits alongside UK Conservatives in a European parliamentary group) immediately announced that they would veto any changes in EU migration rules.
This Polish-British conflict has become more absurd by the day. Last Thursday Tusk said he would auction a Van Persie Arsenal shirt he was given by Cameron as part of a national charity event. The day before, Jan Bury, a senior coalition MP, even called for a boycott of the British company Tesco, ironically itself founded by a son of Polish Jews, ignoring the fact that it employs more than 30,000 people in Poland, sells products from more than 1,500 Polish companies worth up to £330m and pays £100m in taxes each year. By the use of petty rhetoric, Polish leaders are not making it any easier for the thousands of often highly assimilated and hard-working Poles currently living in Britain.
But neither are British politicians. In this conflict no one cares that east European immigrants are 45% less likely to receive benefits than UK natives and make a positive net contribution, paying 34% more in taxes than they receive. They don't care that the problem of benefit fraud is tiny compared with the total benefits budget. The debate about "the truth about immigration" is not about numbers. It's all about identity.
It would be unfair to say that Polish immigration has been without problems. Successive Polish governments, overjoyed with the prospect of "returning to Europe" after communist rule, ignored the importance of cultural diplomacy and day-to-day support via institutions, as if being (becoming?) a "European" would solve everything. Polish postwar immigrants to Britain coined a phrase to describe their situation: "We have landed on Mars and to stay alive we had to build our Poland." Sixty years later, immigrants believed they had nothing to build – they were all "Europeans" now and expected the British to be the same.
But while the British are still struggling to formulate the relationship between their national and European identity, Poles have become an easy target. Polish uncertainties about their own identity result from their struggle as a small nation for the right to exist. This met a confronting sense of grandeur and establishment in Britain. Czech writer Milan Kundera puts it well in his most famous essay The Tragedy of Central Europe:
"A small nation is one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment and it knows it. A French, a Russian, or an English man is not used to asking questions about the very survival of his nation. The Polish anthem, however, starts with the verse: 'Poland has not yet perished…'"
The British, though accustomed to immigrants, did not know a lot about these newcomers and their complexes. Hailing from the wild lands between mystical Russia and civilised Germany, speaking that awkward language, Poles were seen as strange eastern guests.
What is more, the fear of being "swamped" existed long before this present wave of eastern European immigration, revealing ingrained historical prejudices. Alongside the brightest, post-accession immigrants came many poorly educated, unskilled workers. A clash of cultures and identities has developed new prejudices. After 9/11 and 7/7, suspicions grew. The British no longer had patience for immigration in the name of imprecise "Europeanness" and started reasserting their Britishness.
Politicians on both sides have failed to respond creatively, aware that positive long-term migration policy does not guarantee votes. Negative spin and blaming each other are easier.
Is the anti-immigration and, therefore, anti-Polish discourse of politicians, the media and a large percentage of British citizens a justified one? Rationally, not. But it does not matter as long as people believe it.
Of course it is an ongoing challenge for British people to adapt, in an era when the meaning of being European is less clear than ever, but it is also disappointing that successive east European governments have done little to assist their citizens as they attempt to build lives abroad, too easily absolving themselves of responsibility for their migrants and leaving too much to the British. And nothing indicates that Romanians and Bulgarians have done much to escape this pattern. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.
The UK: where a third are older than 65, 30% are black or Asian and the same number are single parents. Of all girls under-16 15% are pregnant. One in four is a Muslim; one in three an immigrant. Unemployment rocketed to over 20%. Are these figures actually accurate? What matters is that Brits believe they are, according to research by Ipsos Mori.
Similar misunderstandings apply to immigrants in the UK. Take Poles for example. According to the 2011 census, 579,000 reside in the UK, making up under 1% of the UK population. This tiny minority receive enormous attention from rightwing media and politicians. David Cameron's recent comments that Polish migrants are taking advantage of UK benefits has sparked much anger in Poland. The prime minister, Donald Tusk, and the opposition leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski (whose party sits alongside UK Conservatives in a European parliamentary group) immediately announced that they would veto any changes in EU migration rules.
This Polish-British conflict has become more absurd by the day. Last Thursday Tusk said he would auction a Van Persie Arsenal shirt he was given by Cameron as part of a national charity event. The day before, Jan Bury, a senior coalition MP, even called for a boycott of the British company Tesco, ironically itself founded by a son of Polish Jews, ignoring the fact that it employs more than 30,000 people in Poland, sells products from more than 1,500 Polish companies worth up to £330m and pays £100m in taxes each year. By the use of petty rhetoric, Polish leaders are not making it any easier for the thousands of often highly assimilated and hard-working Poles currently living in Britain.
But neither are British politicians. In this conflict no one cares that east European immigrants are 45% less likely to receive benefits than UK natives and make a positive net contribution, paying 34% more in taxes than they receive. They don't care that the problem of benefit fraud is tiny compared with the total benefits budget. The debate about "the truth about immigration" is not about numbers. It's all about identity.
It would be unfair to say that Polish immigration has been without problems. Successive Polish governments, overjoyed with the prospect of "returning to Europe" after communist rule, ignored the importance of cultural diplomacy and day-to-day support via institutions, as if being (becoming?) a "European" would solve everything. Polish postwar immigrants to Britain coined a phrase to describe their situation: "We have landed on Mars and to stay alive we had to build our Poland." Sixty years later, immigrants believed they had nothing to build – they were all "Europeans" now and expected the British to be the same.
But while the British are still struggling to formulate the relationship between their national and European identity, Poles have become an easy target. Polish uncertainties about their own identity result from their struggle as a small nation for the right to exist. This met a confronting sense of grandeur and establishment in Britain. Czech writer Milan Kundera puts it well in his most famous essay The Tragedy of Central Europe:
"A small nation is one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment and it knows it. A French, a Russian, or an English man is not used to asking questions about the very survival of his nation. The Polish anthem, however, starts with the verse: 'Poland has not yet perished…'"
The British, though accustomed to immigrants, did not know a lot about these newcomers and their complexes. Hailing from the wild lands between mystical Russia and civilised Germany, speaking that awkward language, Poles were seen as strange eastern guests.
What is more, the fear of being "swamped" existed long before this present wave of eastern European immigration, revealing ingrained historical prejudices. Alongside the brightest, post-accession immigrants came many poorly educated, unskilled workers. A clash of cultures and identities has developed new prejudices. After 9/11 and 7/7, suspicions grew. The British no longer had patience for immigration in the name of imprecise "Europeanness" and started reasserting their Britishness.
Politicians on both sides have failed to respond creatively, aware that positive long-term migration policy does not guarantee votes. Negative spin and blaming each other are easier.
Is the anti-immigration and, therefore, anti-Polish discourse of politicians, the media and a large percentage of British citizens a justified one? Rationally, not. But it does not matter as long as people believe it.
Of course it is an ongoing challenge for British people to adapt, in an era when the meaning of being European is less clear than ever, but it is also disappointing that successive east European governments have done little to assist their citizens as they attempt to build lives abroad, too easily absolving themselves of responsibility for their migrants and leaving too much to the British. And nothing indicates that Romanians and Bulgarians have done much to escape this pattern. Reported by guardian.co.uk 9 hours ago.