To accept or not to accept? Discrepancies between declared and actual actions of the Polish government towards immigrants

Abstract The increase in the number of immigrants in developed countries is a response to the needs of their economies. At the same time, there is growing public resistance against the admission of immigrants. The migration policies implemented by the governments of these countries are the product of the interplay of different interest groups with often conflicting goals. This article uses the semantic field method to examine the official governmental narrative on the measures taken towards international migrants in Poland. The object of the study is all documents we found on the online government websites gov.pl for the period 2020–23. We confronted this narrative with the actual actions taken by the government, reflected by the changing number of foreigners legally residing or working in Poland between 2013 and 2023. We found that the descriptions of the government’s actions towards migrants published on the government websites clearly contradict the actual actions of the government. At the level of declarations, the government opposes the admission of migrants, focusing its message on the Polish-Belarusian border and migrants from Africa and Asia, and declaring Poland’s defence against their influx. In reality, the number of foreigners from these parts of the world obtaining residence or work permits in Poland is increasing exponentially. In this way, contradictions between different interest groups are reconciled, and the victims of such a policy are the migrants themselves. The word ‘migrant’ in Polish society has become a stigma.