Group of Ukrainian illegal immigrants will not be deported from Gdansk

Thirty Ukrainian nationals who had worked illegally at the Gdansk Shipyard for two months and whom the local authorities ordered deported will finally be able to stay in Poland, Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ihor Dolhanov announced on February 26. Yet, this does not solve the problem of illegal immigrant workers.

The Ukrainians were detained on Wednesday the week before last by Polish coastal border guards. The illegal workers were given a deadline of February 22 to leave the country. In case of deportation, the Ukrainians would have been denied reentry to Poland for between two and five years. Apart from 30 Ukrainians, the border guards also detained 32 illegal immigrants from other countries: 15 Russians, 14 Bulgarians, two Belarusians, and one Lithuanian. They were all detained during a police raid initiated by the Solidarity Trade Union. Solidarity had become worried over mass dismissals among Polish shipbuilders while the employment of illegal workers continued. The simmering conflict flared when Polish workers went on strike last week protesting low pay. The administration reacted by dismissing one hundred workers, but the trade union was outraged and demanded a police check which finally revealed 62 illegal workers. They were doing unskilled labor, earning a miserable $2.50 an hour. The illegal workers, mostly residents of Mykolayiv, Kherson and Kerch oblasts (sites of Ukrainian shipyards — Ed.) were hired by the Polish Glos Employment Company jointly owned by a Russian and a Polish national. The illegal workers were sent to Poland supposedly as trainees, with one of them betraying himself during a police interrogation by saying that he receive pay from the shipyard, something trainees are not supposed to get. Last week the police brought criminal charges against the employment agency.

When Ukraine’s General Consulate in Gdansk rose the alarm on the case, the illegal Ukrainian immigrants quite unexpectedly saw the whole situation turn to their advantage. The diplomats managed to persuade the governor of Gdansk to let the Ukrainians continue their alleged training at the shipyard until late February or early March. Meanwhile, the employment company is supposed to come up with official documents permitting the Ukrainians to stay in Poland for a longer period.

Simultaneously, Ukrainian diplomats and consular officials are trying to persuade Ukrainians who wish to try their luck job-seeking in foreign countries that jobs without any guarantees of social protection are not worth the risk. As The Day learned, there were at least two cases last year when Ukrainians were deported from Poland. In the summer nearly thirty illegal workers from Ukraine were detained in one of Poland’s western coastal provinces where they were harvesting strawberries, with another group of Ukrainian illegal agricultural workers deported from the Podliaski province. The Polish police has never been friendly toward illegal aliens, and cases of netting even legal immigrants during police raids are widespread. The same is true about the Czech or Slovak police, to say nothing of those in the Schengen countries. Still, there is something that makes Ukrainians look for illegal jobs abroad for two or three times lower than usual pay.