On Saturday, thousands of people participated in an anti-immigration march in Warsaw, organized by nationalist leader Robert Bąkiewicz. Bąkiewicz, who had previously been a candidate for the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), has long been involved in organizing nationalist events, including Poland’s annual Independence Day marches.
The demonstration took place just eight days before the first round of Poland’s presidential election, where immigration has become a major issue. The two main political factions have been accusing each other of being too lenient on immigration policies. The PiS and its allies have repeatedly criticized the government, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, for being soft on immigration, while the Tusk-led opposition party claims that PiS’s previous policies contributed to the current immigration challenges.
Speaking to the crowd, Bąkiewicz stated, “As a nation, we will never accept this social engineering that has destroyed Western Europe and the Scandinavian countries.” He referred to the violent incidents, including attacks, murders, and rapes, that he claims have become common in cities like Paris, Madrid, and London due to uncontrolled immigration.
Bąkiewicz, along with prominent PiS members, has organized several demonstrations aimed at opposing the repatriation of immigrants and asylum seekers who entered Poland illegally. Bąkiewicz specifically criticized Germany for what he described as a “hybrid war” against Poland by sending migrants back across the border, comparing this to the actions of Belarus and Russia in using migration as a tool of pressure at Poland’s eastern border.
Participants at the march held banners reading “No Immigrants from Germany,” “I Want to Feel Safe in My Own Country,” and “Stop the Invasion.” Many of the slogans also criticized the current government, led by Tusk, accusing it of creating the immigration problem in the first place. PiS officials at the event, including lawmaker Janusz Kowalski, echoed this sentiment, stating that Tusk is more aligned with German interests than with those of Poland.
Former PiS Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, who spoke at the event alongside Bąkiewicz, said that the only way to “save Poland” from the immigration crisis was to prevent Tusk’s presidential candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, from winning the upcoming election.
On the other hand, Tusk’s party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), argues that PiS is largely responsible for allowing uncontrolled immigration during its years in power between 2015 and 2023, when Poland saw the largest wave of migration in its history, one of the biggest in Europe during that period. The Tusk-led government has also launched investigations into the corruption and inefficiencies in the visa system that allowed many immigrants to enter the country without proper vetting.
In response to the current immigration issue, Tusk’s government has focused on increasing physical and electronic barriers at the Polish-Belarusian border, saying that PiS failed to adequately protect Poland from thousands of migrants—mainly from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa—who crossed with Belarusian assistance.
Bąkiewicz and PiS have particularly criticized Germany for returning migrants and asylum seekers to Poland. According to data obtained by Polish media, between January 2024 and February 2025, Germany returned 11,000 such migrants to Poland. However, while PiS claims that this is an escalating issue, data shows that the number of returns actually decreased over that period.
Meanwhile, in 2023, when PiS was in office, the number of asylum seekers returned by Germany to Poland was higher than it was in 2024, under Tusk’s government. As part of a crackdown on immigration, Tusk’s government suspended the right to asylum for people crossing from Belarus into Poland—a decision criticized by human rights organizations, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as a violation of both Polish and international law.
The ongoing debate around immigration, highlighted by the returns of migrants from Germany, has become a major issue in Poland’s presidential election campaign, with both sides using the issue to rally support from their respective bases.
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