Well, guys, another "good" thing in our lives has ended – the well-known Poland.Business Harbor relocation program. Over the past few years, this program has become a great opportunity for those who wanted to leave the CIS countries, both IT specialists and their families.
Also for many Poland.Business Harbor became a salvation from criminal prosecution in Belarus in 2020-2021.
But now this beacon of hope has finally gone out. And it happened, in my opinion, because we also messed up in a big way (IT specialists, - approx. Doberman.media), and the Poles.
Plywood over Warsaw
The program appeared shortly after the elections, in the fall of 2020, becoming a kind of helping hand for the civil society of Belarus, which fell into a harsh repressive mix. The Polish authorities quickly realized that the result of such a tin would be a mass exodus of "brains", and organized convenient conditions for relocation not only with families, but also with entire companies.
In total, before the start of the war in Ukraine, Belarusians received a little more than 25 thousand visas of this type. After February 24, 2022, there was a second surge of interest: in the first two months of the war, Polish consulates issued almost 8500 more visas. But soon the demand for visas crept down again, and the difficulty of obtaining it, on the contrary, went up due to the systematic expulsion of Polish diplomats from Belarus.
In reserve
According to official data, during the program, Belarusians received about 90 thousand PBH visas. But only about 25 thousand of their owners entered Poland.
The Poles are perplexed where everyone else has gone, but I have an answer to this question.
It turned out that many initially received visas just in case, so that they could quickly leave the country if something happened. As a result, nothing special happened in the understanding of these people, they remained in Belarus, and their visas expired before they even began.
"Cossack" in gold underpants from the Polish Foreign Ministry
Несмотря на, казалось бы, катастрофические 70% нецелевого использования, гораздо более сокрушительный удар программе нанесли вовсе не запасливые домоседы-айтишники из Беларуси, а высокопоставленные лица польского МИДа.
Back in mid-2023, a scandal began to flare up regarding the mass issuance of work visas to migrants from Asia and Africa for money. According to various sources, the number of visas illegally issued in this way ranged from 350 thousand to almost a million!
As a result, the scandal with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs completely absorbed the situation with the actual shortage of PBH holders in Poland. It is quite possible that, if it were not for this scandal, no one would have paid attention to the "slight shortage" of Belarusian programmers for a long time.
What now?
Nothing. One train has left, and a new one is not yet in sight. Now obtaining any Polish visa in Belarus is a rare success, and IT specialists who still want to move are offered national workers.It must be said that Poland had another good reason to close the program - it did not fulfill its task of providing Polish IT companies with personnel. Even those Belarusians who still came under the program prefer to get a job in familiar companies with domestic capital.
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski assures that the suspension of the program is temporary until the identified problems are resolved. But something tells me that it is unlikely to ever be restarted.
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