Poland Rejects Muslim Immigrants: ‘General Consensus’ That Muslims Don’t Assimilate

A former Polish parliament speaker and foreign minister told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday that Poland favors Christian immigrants over Muslim immigrants due to their respective abilities to assimilate.

Radoslaw Sikorski’s words are mirrored by Poland’s resistance to accepting refugees from Syria, Eretreia, and Afghanistan despite EU quotas, and at the same time welcoming two million immigrants from Ukraine in “the biggest wave of migration into the European Union in recent times.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian migrants are also landing the majority of Polish jobs amidst almost no backlash, few hate crimes, and no significant increase in crime. Sikroski said this is because of the difference between Christian and Muslim migrants.

“In Poland, there is a general consensus that we don’t want the kind of postcolonial Western style of immigration,” Sikorski told WSJ. “People think Christians are all right, and non-Christians are not all right, Christians will assimilate and the non-Christians won’t. It’s that simple.”

Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine, claims that the massive exodus of Ukrainians is the second biggest danger facing their country after the Russian military onslaught.

“How much time do we have to close our eyes to the fact that a million Ukrainians leave the country each year? Three, two, five years? How much creative class do we still have left before we allow them all to leave?” she said at a conference in February.

The Wall Street Journal reports that these movements are part of “tectonic shifts in Europe’s demographic makeup,” since many Polish workers have begun moving about Europe due to EU freedom-of-movement rules, leaving gaps in the work force. These jobs are now being taken over by Ukrainians who could not find work in their own country.

“In Poland, you don’t look for work, work looks for you,” Artem Zozulias, head of a migrant integration organization, said to The Wall Street Journal. “In Ukraine, finding work is a job.”