Now Poland would like its workers to come back home
NOT unreasonably the debate over mass migration has concentrated on its effects on Britain: overloaded public services, suppressed wages for the low-paid and so on. But we should spare a thought for the Eastern European countries from which people are migrating.
Much as the EU would like us to think otherwise, free movement of labour has not been such a great thing for Poland where the government has launched a campaign trying to help workers to return. In Latvia the government has been reduced to broadcasting adverts featuring the Jackson Five hit I Want You Back.
While we suffer from the effects of unplanned population growth, in many parts of Eastern Europe they have the opposite problem: a declining population and brain drain of talent as able, productive workers are lured abroad.
Since Poland joined the EU in 2004 more than two million of its citizens flocked westwards to take advantage of higher wages and greater job opportunities. Of these, 650,000 came to Britain. It isn’t hard to see their motivation. In 2015 the average monthly wage in Poland was the equivalent of 705 euros. In Britain it was 2,253 euros.
WHAT was predicted by many to be a short-term shift in population has turned into a long-term brain drain. If anything the loss of population from Poland is accelerating. In 2013 alone 500,000 Poles emigrated.
Poland is in a more dramatic version of the cycle of decline in which Britain found itself during the 1970s when we lost a net half a million residents over several years. As people leave, the economy is suppressed which encourages yet more people to up sticks and seek better opportunities abroad.
And of course it tends to be the most entrepreneurial people who leave, while more conservative-minded workers stay behind. Job-creating businesses which might have been set up in Warsaw or Krakow end up being established in London or Berlin.
True, many Polish workers send some earnings home which gives a small boost to the Polish economy. But that is a poor substitute for the wealth