Dominik Tarczynski: It's Not About Refugees, It's About Illegal Immigrants

"It's not about refugees, it's about illegal immigrants."

Dominik Tarczynski said it in a June 18, 2018 interview with Cathy Newman of Britain's Channel 4 News. At the time he was a member of the Sejm, Poland's parliament, for the conservative Law and Justice party. Today he serves as a member of the European Parliament, where he has become one of the loudest voices in Europe on migration and border security.

The interview spread widely online. Newman pressed him on Poland's refusal to accept migrants under the European Union's relocation plan, and Tarczynski did not soften his answer. He spoke with open pride about the policy. The distinction he made that day is the one he still repeats: people fleeing war are refugees, and people who cross borders illegally are not. In his view, mixing the two is how Europe lost control of its borders.

Poland has since put both halves of that sentence into practice, and in a way few expected.

When Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Poland became the front door for people fleeing the war. It took in more than a million Ukrainian refugees, opening homes, schools and hospitals in one of the largest refugee efforts Europe has seen in decades. Tarczynski has pointed to that record whenever critics call Poland unwelcoming.

At the same time, Poland closed its other door. In 2021, thousands of migrants tried to cross illegally from Belarus, in a crisis that Poland and the EU said was organized by the Belarusian government to pressure Europe. Poland answered by building a 186-kilometer steel wall, about 5.5 meters high, along the border, backed by soldiers and border guards.

Tarczynski now sums up his position in three words: "Be like Poland." He has carried that slogan to audiences in Britain and the United States, appearing on television and at conservative events to argue that firm enforcement is the reason his country feels safe. To his supporters, Poland is proof that a country can protect its border and still open its doors to people truly fleeing war.

Not everyone sees it that way. Human rights groups have criticized the border policy, saying it has been too harsh on asylum seekers stranded in the forests along the frontier, and that some had real claims to protection. Others in the EU have pushed back on Poland's refusal to join shared relocation plans.

Eight years after that Channel 4 interview, the question he raised is at the center of the immigration debate on both sides of the Atlantic.

Poland had refused to take part in the EU's 2015 plan to share asylum seekers among member states, and the EU's top court ruled in 2020 that the refusal broke EU law. Tarczynski has said that Ukrainians fleeing the war are refugees, while many arriving from Morocco, other parts of Africa and Syria are, in his view, illegal migrants.

Should America follow Poland's approach to illegal immigration? YES OR NO?