Border guards push emigres to say how Polish they really are
The catalyst often is a request for a work permit and visa renewal by a Polish emigre who has returned to work here, temporarily. Until this year, none of them had had any problems getting one-year work permits on their foreign passports.
This spring, they began to face new questions - and to be refused renewal of the one-year work permits as well as the new, two-year temporary residence work permits.
They are being told that they "appear to be Polish" and therefore should be travelling on a Polish passport, not on, say, their American passport. That way, as a Polish citizen, they won't need any kind of visa.
A venture capitalist who has worked in Poland since 1993 said he was not only rebuffed in his efforts to get a two-year temporary residence visa, he was treated rudely by the Polish immigration office. He has been a U.S. citizen for more than 20 years and had traveled back and forth to Poland on two different jobs since 1993 with no problems - until this year when he had an unpleasant encounter with a visa official.
"She was really horrible. She said, 'Well, you're a Polish citizen. You have to go back and get a Polish passport. Or else renounce your Polish citizenship,' " he said. "I have no idea what the motive was. But she was so hostile. And I don't understand the consequences. Can I still vote (in the United States)? Can the Polish government force me to make that choice? Is this a tactic to force us out? We come back to make money and help however we can. But there have got to be some limits."
Pat Butenis, consul general for the U.S. Embassy, says the Polish government is entirely within its right to consider Polish-born emigres as Polish citizens. "We do the same thing," she said. "The Poles are asking them to make a decision. If the government says they are a Polish citizen, then they have that option to renounce their citizenship and then that's it."
They can travel here on a foreign passport and will need a visa, she said.
Getting a Polish passport would not endanger a Polish-American from U.S. voting or other U.S. activities, Butenis said, as long as there are no overt statements that would indicate the person intended to sever their U.S. citizenship.
Stanley Urban, chief financial officer at Thomson Polkolor, said he has begun to be grilled by border guards on whether he is or is not a Polish citizen. He has his answer down pat, by now: he's a third generation American and he has no idea how his great-grandparents gave up their Polish citizenship.
Richard Kania, who is teaching a media-and-society course at the Central European University this summer, also got intensive scrutiny this year by border guards. When he was here a year ago, as a Fulbright scholar, he had not. Kania, a criminologist who now is a department chair at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, got the treatment from a Polish border guard as he returned from a speaking tour in Belarussia in June. The question, again, was whether he might not really be Polish. "I said I'm an American; my mother was born in Poland."
The good news, for Polish emigres who are back working here temporarily, is that the citizenship appears to be on a separate track - at least for now - from taxation issues which are tied to permanent residency issues.
Ernst&Young's personal tax manager, Andrzej Marczak, says, "from a tax perspective, the citizenship is irrelevant. In other words, an individual who has dual American and Polish citizenship may be, for tax purposes, considered as a non-Polish tax resident. He doesn't have a permanent place of residence in Poland, for instance."
Many Ernst &Young clients "left Poland 10 years ago and are returning here for their home-country companies to take the job here - but from the tax point of view, they may be, under certain circumstances, a non-Polish resident."
But "from the employment law point of view, such a guy doesn't need to obtain any work permit or visa: he still has Polish citizenship.
"So I don't see any risk if an individual from an employment point of view has Polish citizenship, and from tax point of view may be treated as a non-Polish tax resident," Marczak said. "We just qualify people from residential status; we have to figure out where they have permanent residence for tax purposes."
This spring, they began to face new questions - and to be refused renewal of the one-year work permits as well as the new, two-year temporary residence work permits.
They are being told that they "appear to be Polish" and therefore should be travelling on a Polish passport, not on, say, their American passport. That way, as a Polish citizen, they won't need any kind of visa.
A venture capitalist who has worked in Poland since 1993 said he was not only rebuffed in his efforts to get a two-year temporary residence visa, he was treated rudely by the Polish immigration office. He has been a U.S. citizen for more than 20 years and had traveled back and forth to Poland on two different jobs since 1993 with no problems - until this year when he had an unpleasant encounter with a visa official.
"She was really horrible. She said, 'Well, you're a Polish citizen. You have to go back and get a Polish passport. Or else renounce your Polish citizenship,' " he said. "I have no idea what the motive was. But she was so hostile. And I don't understand the consequences. Can I still vote (in the United States)? Can the Polish government force me to make that choice? Is this a tactic to force us out? We come back to make money and help however we can. But there have got to be some limits."
Pat Butenis, consul general for the U.S. Embassy, says the Polish government is entirely within its right to consider Polish-born emigres as Polish citizens. "We do the same thing," she said. "The Poles are asking them to make a decision. If the government says they are a Polish citizen, then they have that option to renounce their citizenship and then that's it."
They can travel here on a foreign passport and will need a visa, she said.
Getting a Polish passport would not endanger a Polish-American from U.S. voting or other U.S. activities, Butenis said, as long as there are no overt statements that would indicate the person intended to sever their U.S. citizenship.
Stanley Urban, chief financial officer at Thomson Polkolor, said he has begun to be grilled by border guards on whether he is or is not a Polish citizen. He has his answer down pat, by now: he's a third generation American and he has no idea how his great-grandparents gave up their Polish citizenship.
Richard Kania, who is teaching a media-and-society course at the Central European University this summer, also got intensive scrutiny this year by border guards. When he was here a year ago, as a Fulbright scholar, he had not. Kania, a criminologist who now is a department chair at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, got the treatment from a Polish border guard as he returned from a speaking tour in Belarussia in June. The question, again, was whether he might not really be Polish. "I said I'm an American; my mother was born in Poland."
The good news, for Polish emigres who are back working here temporarily, is that the citizenship appears to be on a separate track - at least for now - from taxation issues which are tied to permanent residency issues.
Ernst&Young's personal tax manager, Andrzej Marczak, says, "from a tax perspective, the citizenship is irrelevant. In other words, an individual who has dual American and Polish citizenship may be, for tax purposes, considered as a non-Polish tax resident. He doesn't have a permanent place of residence in Poland, for instance."
Many Ernst &Young clients "left Poland 10 years ago and are returning here for their home-country companies to take the job here - but from the tax point of view, they may be, under certain circumstances, a non-Polish resident."
But "from the employment law point of view, such a guy doesn't need to obtain any work permit or visa: he still has Polish citizenship.
"So I don't see any risk if an individual from an employment point of view has Polish citizenship, and from tax point of view may be treated as a non-Polish tax resident," Marczak said. "We just qualify people from residential status; we have to figure out where they have permanent residence for tax purposes."
