“Wprost” is starting a series of debates on migration policy. “Alarming forecasts”

The forecasts are alarming. According to the Central Statistical Office, over the next 35 years the number of people of working age in Poland will shrink by at least 7 million people. In 2023 alone, 184,000 jobs disappeared from the Polish labor market. people. This trend will deepen as the post-war baby boom retires. We can’t fool demographics. There are fewer and fewer Poles born to us. And those who are not born today will simply not enter the labor market in a dozen or several dozen years.

Migration the only solution?

Business says it simply: the only salvation for the Polish economy is a good migration strategy. To maintain the Polish pension system, to maintain foreign investors, GDP growth, health care, and the army, we need to employ several hundred thousand new foreigners and their families to work every year. But experts immediately add that this is unrealistic in Poland. The problem is procedures, bureaucracy, weak integration tools and the increasingly worse image of a migrant, even an economic one, in the eyes of public opinion. How to change it, whether it can be changed at all and whether we really need foreigners to work so much – we will talk about this at the first debate this year of the weekly “Wprost”.

What does business and the government expect?

We will want to evaluate the new government migration strategy entitled: “Take back control. Ensure safety”, which was published at the end of last year. We will talk about what business expects from the government regarding migration, and what the government expects from entrepreneurs when it comes to employing foreigners. We will try to answer the question of how to keep foreigners in our labor market so that they do not go further to the West. We will ask entrepreneurs what inhibits them most when employing foreigners and to what extent the gap in the Polish labor market can be filled with innovations, i.e. robotization, automation and artificial intelligence.

Who will take part in the debates?

We invited representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Interior and Administration and the Ministry of Family, Labor and Social Policy to participate in the discussion.

The largest Polish employers and representatives of large non-governmental, economic and industry organizations announced their participation in the discussion, such as: Civic Development Forum, National Chamber of Commerce, Applia – Association of Household Appliances Employers and McDonald’s.

The first of the series of debates will take place on January 29 in the editorial office of the weekly “Wprost”. The moderator will be the managing editor, Szymon Krawiec.

The meeting was held under the patronage of the Civic Development Forum.