Tusk: issuing of visas in Poland down 87%, work permits for foreigners down 69%

On 19 October 2026, in a video published on the X platform, Prime Minister Donald Tusk presented data on Poland's migration policy. He stressed that, in his view, Poland has avoided the problems faced by Western European countries. The figures below are the prime minister's own calculations, as reported by the PAP news agency.

What the prime minister said

Tusk compared 2026 with 2022. According to him, over that period:

• the issuing of visas fell by 87%,
• the number of work permits for foreigners fell by 69%,
• the number of student visas fell by 65%,
• the number of deportations rose by 200%.

The prime minister claimed that some work permits were fictitious and served only to make it possible to come to Poland. He added that between 2018 and 2023 Poland issued around a million visas a year. According to him, in 2022 there were more than 20,000 successful illegal crossings of the border with Belarus, and this year, as he put it, there have been none at all.

Reference to the situation in Europe

In his address, Tusk referred to the riots in France on Saturday. According to PAP, social protests against rising living costs turned into attacks on public buildings and the looting of shops. On Sunday there were clashes with the police in Paris and Marseille.

He also mentioned the migration crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in North Africa. At the end of July, more than 70,000 people arrived there from Morocco, and the vast majority returned to Morocco within the first 48 hours. The prime minister also pointed to the latest EU summit in Brussels. As he recalled, Poland, Italy and Denmark proposed including provisions on migration in the conclusions, contrary to the policy of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, which he judged to be ineffective.

Assessment of the previous government

Tusk said that the migration policy of the PiS governments "was a catastrophe". He accused them of admitting the most legal migrants of any European country – according to him, around 3,000 a day. He said the current government had tightened border security and toughened asylum policy. He expressed the hope that the Polish approach would become a Europe-wide policy.

This is the prime minister's political assessment, not the findings of independent institutions. The figures cited come from his statement, and the source does not say which specific official data they are based on.