As of May 1, Poles no longer need to carry a foreign passport for travel, so they have begun to rediscover Europe—they are looking for work right there. Passports are still required only by Norway, Switzerland and Iceland. In other EU countries, young people can feel quite at ease.
And how many young Poles can be seen at the Shehyni–Medyka pedestrian crossing! Almost all of them (except tourists with heavy backpacks and tents) are bringing vodka and cigarettes from Ukraine to sell at home. There are no special privileges for them—they stand in the general queue, except that they do not need to show 300 euros to cross the Ukrainian border. But the Poles do not hide the fact that they are smuggling. When customs officers remark why they do not go and work properly, they reply that they do not want to. They are fine as is—in a few hours they can earn about a dozen dollars.
Almost every Pole I met on the road had worked abroad somewhere. Even those who now drive the latest BMW and Mercedes models were also harvesting crops or working construction in Norway, France, Italy, England and the USA in the early 90s. Everyone considered it normal and said that it was very hard for them there. A 25-year-old young man told me that this summer he had already been to America, where he worked as a lifeguard at a pool. He earned $5,000, brought home $2,000 and bought a computer.
In Ireland, Sweden and Great Britain, Poles do not even need a work permit. Therefore, finding a place there is practically impossible. “When I decided to try to get a job at a bar, two Poles who were also asking for work were already leaving. And so it is everywhere,” says Petrus. So he decided to find a job in Poland for now; by profession he is a computer engineer. But in Przemyśl, where he comes from, there are no prospects—he went to a larger place and left his resume at several private companies. If he cannot find anything, he may fly to the States or somewhere else again. (Interestingly, a plane ticket from Przemyśl to Lviv costs 460 zlotys, and to London – 375. Moreover, if a student buys a ticket to England and also round-trip, the price decreases significantly – by almost 50%.)
Poles look at our migrant workers as if they are oddities: what are they looking for in Poland?
“There is no point in staying in Poland anymore”
I am speaking with Mr. Stanisław, a retired farmer. He complains that his life is cheerless. The only thing that helps him forget is cheap Ukrainian vodka. He worked as an electrician at a large enterprise for many years and had a decent salary—almost $1,000. But one day he was laid off and four young workers were hired in his place. He sued the company; the case has been going on for two years...
Mr. Stanisław's wife Svitlana comes from the Ukrainian city of Brody. She has been living in Poland for five years, but she speaks with a heavy accent. Her daughter stayed in Ukraine, and a granddaughter was recently born. “There is nothing for them to do in Poland,” says Svitlana. “Stanisław receives a pension and has his own small garden and vegetable plot; that is what we live on. And young people flee abroad or to big cities.”
...Some young guys came into the house. It turned out they are from Transcarpathia. They have been in Poland for several months, working wherever they can. Before that, they had illegal work in the Czech Republic. Now they are planning to return home and then go further—to Germany. “There is no point in staying in Poland anymore,” says Bohdan. “Here you can barely earn enough for bread. But we do not want to go home either—there is no work at all in our village.”
The guys live in the attic and sleep on hay. When it suddenly started raining, they came out into the yard in swimming trunks, soaped their heads and washed up. In exchange for living at Mr. Stanisław's for free, they help him with the household, for example, they spray trees with chemicals. A hard road awaits them, so they have already adapted to all kinds of living conditions.
In a pigsty together with dogs
200 kilometers from Warsaw, the small village of Józefów. Cherry orchards abound here; almost all residents of the area are engaged in farming. Ukrainians come to pick cherries, but they live here in conditions close to concentration camp ones. And they do not complain much about their fate—it is already in their blood.
“Do you want to work on cherries?” Mr. Tomek immediately asks, upon learning that I am from Ukraine. “But you need to wait two or three days until the situation becomes clear—we are on strike now.” It turned out that a catastrophe happened this year—because of the too-low price of cherries on the European market, farmers declared a nationwide strike. Likewise, the entire blackcurrant crop was lost—there was no one to pick it because of low prices; they gave only 20 groszy per kilogram.
“Please, come in,” says Mr. Tomek. “You can live over there; there are already plenty of your people.” We go further into the yard and enter a barrack where four women are sitting on the floor and speaking Ukrainian. The barrack is an ordinary pigsty, five by five meters, where you can still smell the animal that was kept there recently. Old sofas without legs and mattresses lie on the concrete floor. Eight, or if needed, ten guest workers can easily fit in such a room. The “shower” in the yard is a rusty chemical barrel, from the tap of which water flows that heats up during the day from the sun. There are no curtains at all, so women should not be embarrassed here. And there is nothing to say about the toilet—you cannot enter it without disgust.
So these are the same promised “good conditions.” And this is despite the fact that during the harvest, up to 30 workers live just in Mr. Tomek's yard. Although, as Mrs. Hanna told us, these are still heavenly apartments. Not far away, at a neighbor's, Ukrainians live in much worse dwellings, practically on bare ground, under a canopy. At night, they say, rats sometimes crawl across their faces. The owner simply decided not to free up his pigsty for people.
How can one live in such a place? Stepan, a 48-year-old teacher from Ternopil, says that Mr. Tomek is a good host. Friendly, humane, never wrongs his workers. And the difficult conditions can be endured, because the cherry-picking season does not last long – at most two weeks. Although some live here for months – first they picked strawberries, then plums will ripen, and in autumn they will pick cabbage and carrots.
But instead of the promised two meals a day, they only give food at lunch – an empty soup without meat and small sandwiches. Not everyone can eat this "zupa" – they cook separately for themselves. Under an iron canopy there is a summer kitchen – a stove with a gas cylinder, benches and a long table. What do they eat? "Mivina" which they brought from home, and buckwheat or pearl barley porridge. They only buy bread at the store.
42-year-old Ms. Hanna once worked at a knitwear factory, but was laid off when the factory fell into private hands. She has been living in Poland for eight years, almost without leaving. Life is passing by, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. "I was in Warsaw, renting an apartment. At first a bed cost three zlotys, then five, and now it's already ten. So per month I had to pay 300 zlotys (almost $80) just for having a place to sleep. And you also need to eat something, and get to work or look for it."
Ms. Hanna says that finding a decent job for a Ukrainian in Warsaw is practically unrealistic now – you can only hope for great luck or connections. The best option for a woman is to clean apartments, but without references from previous places, it's not even worth calling about an ad. One acquaintance was offered not only cleaning but also looking after children. They paid little – 400 zlotys. And everything would be fine (since the children are in kindergarten during the day), but she also had to take a large dog – a Great Dane – for a walk. And after a month, another child was added to this "cheerful" company, whom she couldn't even reprimand – the child would immediately run and say that she was being beaten. She had to quit.
30-year-old Halya is a kindergarten teacher from Ivano-Frankivsk. She left two small children at home and went to Poland to earn money. Her story nearly ended tragically. Acquaintances called and told her to come for the cherry harvest. Halya took all the money her family had – 300 hryvnias – and set off. She hoped to earn at least $200 in two weeks and agreed to any work. She tried to cross the border in Shehyni twice. But because she could not show currency equivalent to 300 euros, she was turned back. She decided to go through the Rava-Ruska crossing. On the third attempt, she finally crossed the border. But disoriented and not knowing how to get to her destination, she took a bus towards Warsaw. And only there did she realize she had made a detour of an extra 400 km. She spent the night at the station, and in the morning set off again. When she arrived in the town of Lipsko, it turned out that her money was almost gone.
In the evening, some Poles – a married couple – noticed Halya, who was sitting quietly at the local bus station, without hope, without food or money. Perhaps they saw fear on the girl's face and decided to ask what was wrong and how to help. And they really helped. They invited her to their home, fed her, and put her to bed. In the morning, they called the "rolnyk" (farmer) who was supposed to take her in at a nearby village. He replied that he no longer needed "rvachi" (crop pickers). "How so?" the Poles were surprised. "You invited a girl from another country who nearly fainted on the road, and now you refuse her help?!" The "rolnyk" hung up... But the couple had another acquaintance, a farmer, and called him. That's how Halya ended up in a barrack in Mr. Tomek's yard.
When I asked about basic self-respect, almost no one reacted to these words – what are you talking about, man? How else can you feed your families? But this time, even the money they had hoped for would not be there.
Through the press, Poles defend their rights
Staying with Polish friends and reading the local press, I was surprised by some publications. One of them, for example, is called Zly mandat ("Bad Receipt"). It is about Tadeusz Moscicki from the town of Stalowa Wola, who for half a year has been discussing with the police who is right and who is wrong. He once parked his car in an inappropriate place and was fined 100 zlotys. But the paper they gave him does not state in which currency to pay the fine, claims Mr. Tadeusz. He filed a complaint with the local prosecutor's office that the ticket was incorrectly issued, and therefore he would not pay the money for this reason. Since he did not receive a positive response, he turned to the voivodeship prosecutor's office. He says that if he does not get justice, he will go with a complaint all the way to Strasbourg.
"It's not about the money," says Mr. Tadeusz, "but about the competence of law enforcement officers. Why is it that when an ordinary person makes a mistake, they are immediately put in their place, while representatives of power structures are always right? They said on TV that we need to point out the shortcomings of the authorities. And I am doing this for the sake of justice."
Maybe the whole thing is that we Ukrainians do not know how or are afraid to defend our rights? Someone will say there is no point – such cases in our country are simply absurd. But if everyone thinks that way, the rule of law, which they have been telling us about on TV for so long, will never come to Ukraine.
Another publication with a rather telling title – "A Stinky Affair". In the town of Nisko, Mr. Zbigniew G. set up a garbage dump in his own yard. There are old furniture, boxes, construction waste, bottles, rusty pots. All of this is visible through the fence, which worries the town's residents, especially the neighbors. They went to court to have Mr. Zbigniew remove the garbage. The verdict was this: if Mr. Zbigniew G. does not remove the garbage from his own yard within ten days, he faces criminal liability. Period.
The articles in the Polish regional media do not deal with global problems, because they almost do not exist. What remains are small ones, which residents try to deal with on their own, not waiting for someone else to sort things out.
After joining the European Union, Poland is awaiting major changes. In principle, they have already arrived. It is also clear that a united Europe will be even more tightly sealed off from its eastern neighbors. New rules for accepting refugees in Poland have already been developed, which will significantly reduce the chance of unwanted guests entering Europe. But even visas are planned to be made paid (for Ukrainians they are currently free). Will this put an end to the influx of illegal workers? Hardly. Ukrainians will just need to make much more effort to cross the border.