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Comment by flavor8 | Hacker News Reader

You'd have to be quite apolitical to consider a move to Poland right now.

If you ignore weekly nazi rallies and all the book burning it's not such a bad place./s

Seriously though, Poland is one of the safest place to live in right now, especially if you're a foreigner. Media's portrayal of current political situation in Poland is HUGELY exaggerated.

I can’t readily discern where you are going with this comment. Perhaps the point would have been better stated another way.

First sentence but unironically and it's getting worse.

Where in Poland do you live that you get such an impression? Do you even experience such things or are you just listening to the propaganda?

Warsaw is a beautiful city with quite an active and thriving tech community. I thought of moving there after a visit recently, until I heard about a recent city sanctioned far right rally attended by 60K people demanding a "White Europe". Any dreams of moving to Poland ended after that

Actually, despite the media buzz, there were about 20 morons with "white Europe" banner, quickly kicked away by organizers, but for some reason media loved presenting their photos, not the remaining 60k of people of all age (0 to 99) celebrating the Day of Independence in a rather peaceful atmosphere.

In reality there is nothing to be afraid, Poland is one of the safest countries in the World (there are multiple resources about that), people are traditionally hospitable, in bigger cities like Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw there is pretty a lot of people from many Western Europe countries, there are also a lot of (about 1 million) refugees and emigrants from Ukraine, emigrants from Belarus, quite big Vietnamese community. So far everyone live in peace together.

A fun fact - my daughter goes to a regular primary public school and in her class there is a boy from India, a boy from western Ukraine, a girl from Ukraine and a girl from Belarus and. They were assimilated very quickly, without particular teachers assistance (public school, so teachers don't have time for anything but teaching); boys soaked into the group immediately, as running around together and screaming plus playing soccer does not require much language skills.

I think that if you consider seriously moving/traveling to country X, relaying on media does not make much sense, as they are chasing something that would make a "news". So, surely, there are people in Poland who bite dogs, yet the reality is that, typically, dogs are biting people.

Luckily, these days it is easy to contact foreigners living in Poland (Facebook groups, native language speakers portals, etc.), so, just ask someone who lives here.

>a lot of (about 1 million) refugees and emigrants from Ukraine

Please don't mix labor migrants (99.99+% of the number you indicated) with refugees.

According to the fresh official Foreigners Office report[0], there were 7.5k applications and around 400(sic!) positive decisions for the "refugee" or "protection" status from the Ukrainian citizens in the last 15(!) years.

[0] https://udsc.gov.pl/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/UKRAINA-01.09...

10x easier to just drive through the border or get a work visa than to apply for the asylum.

Its rather sad how close we are to a 1984-esque "believe everything you hear on the 'news'" society. I hope one day we can move past that, and better realize that nearly all news is founded on Outrage designed to get advertisement views.

Here's your litmus test: If you read a news story and it invokes some emotional state within you, immediately preempt that and use your head. Is it possible they could be exaggerating, or straight up lying? What are their motivations and biases? Are there corroborating "ground" reports from individuals with different biases?

This is what my Polish friend said as well, that they're growing like crazy, and drastic negative politics alongside with it as well.

There's the media posturing and then there's reality. A lot of people in Poland have not had any contact with other cultures and make inappropriate jokes about that, those who traveled a bit are totally ok with it, the last 20 years introduced a lot more multiculturalism but there's still ways to go. The leading right-wing political party is a data driven monsters - they will build their policy on whatever gets them seats in parliament and local elections. One the most successful right wing policies in Poland right now is 500+ - a form of Universal Basic Income for every family with children. This clearly a very socialist idea, but introduced by a 'conservative' party. My point is the conservative party, like most of Poles are very pragmatic and generally will do what works rather than being too principled. If you understand that, you'll gel well with the society in Poland.

Too true. I’ve been eyeing ditching my polish citizenship for a while now.

Is that true in all of Poland though? Many people find Trump repulsive, and they will agree with most of their peers if they move to a big city in a blue state.

Big cities (capitals of subregions and anything over ~150 000 people) are liberal, small cities and countryside is conservative. Western and northern Poland has more people in big cities so it's liberal, Eastern and southern Poland has more people in countryside so it's conservative. Overall more people live in the conservative parts, so Poland is conservative, but the exact division changes with each elections, previously we had 2 terms of "liberals".

Why throw politics into it?

If you live in the country you have citizenship in, with a right to be there, you might be lucky enough not to worry about it. This doesn't spread to all citizens of all countries: African Americans couldn't comfortably just move anywhere in the states in the 1950's, for example.

If you are moving to another country, it becomes even more important. Not only can the politics affect your life greatly (being gay might be illegal, for example, with harsh punishments), but in many places, you won't have a say in said politics. You can rally folks together, but most places won't let you vote.

Even if the laws at the present time fit your lifestyle, the political trends might be geared towards changing this. It really pays to pay attention to such things. Politics and culture are important to pay attention to, especially when moving to another country.

Because the rise of anti-immigrant parties and sentiment is rather relevant to prospective immigrants.

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