Job hunters from East and West increasingly converge on Poland

The number of people coming to work in Poland now exceeds the number of Poles leaving to find work abroad. In 2004 some 320,000 foreigners came to Poland to work for a longer period. "The large majority of them are Ukrainians, Belorussians and Russians who work illegally in our country," admits Jan Węgrzyn, the general director of the Office for Repatriation and Aliens. However, the number of foreigners from Western Europe has also increased. In 2004 their number, together with their families, amounted to 70,000. The number of Poles emigrating in search of a job was significantly lower and totaled 140,000 in 2004. This is mostly due to high unemployment rates in the Western Europe which means that only the most dynamic Poles have a chance of landing a good job there. Meanwhile in Poland, jobs are becoming increasingly attractive as the worst paid and hardest jobs are increasingly taken by foreigners from the East. Citizens from Western Europe usually arrive to work for a Polish branch of their companies. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, B1) E.B.