Polish Government Plans Referendum Asking if Voters Want ‘Thousands of Illegal Immigrants’

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s ruling get together desires to ask voters in a referendum whether or not they help accepting “hundreds of unlawful immigrants from the Center East and Africa” as a part of a European Union relocation plan, the prime minister mentioned Sunday, as his conservative get together seeks to stave off a problem from the political opposition.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki introduced the referendum query in a brand new video revealed on social media. It indicated that his get together, Legislation and Justice, is looking for to make use of migration in his basic election marketing campaign, a tactic that helped it take energy in 2015.

The federal government has beforehand mentioned it desires to carry the referendum alongside the autumn parliamentary election, scheduled for Oct. 15. Leaders have introduced two different questions in current days.

Morawiecki mentioned that the query would say: “Do you help the admission of hundreds of unlawful immigrants from the Center East and Africa below the compelled relocation mechanism imposed by the European forms?”

European Union inside ministers in June endorsed a plan to share out responsibility for migrants coming into Europe with out authorization, the basis of one of many bloc’s longest-running political crises. The ministers endorsed a deal balancing the duty for nations the place most migrants arrive to course of and lodge them in opposition to the requirement for different members to offer help, whether or not monetary or by internet hosting refugees.

Legislation and Justice has lengthy been in battle with the 27-member European Union over a notion by the bloc that the Warsaw authorities’s modifications to the judiciary and media quantity to democratic erosion.

Europe’s asylum system collapsed eight years in the past after effectively over 1,000,000 folks entered — most of them fleeing battle in Syria — and overwhelmed reception capacities in Greece and Italy, within the course of sparking one of many EU’s largest political crises.

The 27 EU nations have bickered ever since over which nations ought to take duty for folks arriving with out authorization, and whether or not different members ought to be obliged to assist them cope.

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