CYPRIAN NORWID: God only knows how much harm and misery comes from the lack of recognition of that part of Polish society that is the Emigration. Lack of recognition, doing nothing to bring it back to the country. As if we were no longer needed by the country.
(Based on Kazimierz Braun's play "The Return of Norwid")
This essay is intended for the elites in Warsaw, and in particular for all candidates for the office of the President of the Republic of Poland. I am writing it from the headquarters of Kuryer Polski in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Polish diaspora in the world (Source: Kuryer Polski, illustration generated by AI)
There are 20 million people in the world who are proud of their Polish origin. All these people have enormous potential, which must be combined to serve Poland in the world and help create a modern image of Poland, Polish culture, science, art and economy. It is time for this message to reach Polish and diaspora elites. We are one of the largest diasporas in the world! The Polish diaspora is the fifth largest group in OECD countries. Over a quarter of Polish emigrants (28.8%) are people with higher education from Poland, as well as higher education from their countries of residence.
“Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization” is the title of a book published by Parag Khann in 2016. (Parag Khann is an Indian-American, a specialist in international relations, and a global strategic advisor who describes how the networks of transport, energy, and communication infrastructure have led to a “global revolution of connections.”) This is the most important book for those who want to understand the principles and trends of creating global networks of connections in the 21st century. Connecting the “soft power” networks, i.e. Poles in Poland, with the 20 million Polish diaspora should be a key priority for any government in Poland. With the important assumption that such connections must be non-partisan and serve Poland, not individual parties and their short-sighted goals.
Today, in the face of the changing balance of power in the world, the most important thing is to reject old mental clichés and create a modern vision for Poland and the Polish diaspora in the world. A vision that would significantly and actively support the development of Poland and its foreign policy. Therefore, new goals must be set and the scale of their importance outlined.
1. Polish media abroad
They have an important role to play and should become an added value for foreign policy, not an instrument of party games.
The lack of serious consideration of the Polish media abroad has been taking place practically since 1989, when the media in Poland stopped noticing that the Polish narrative could be promoted by the Polish media abroad.
Let me just remind you that, during communism, the Polish media abroad were the only ones to convey to Poles and the world the true image of Poland under Soviet occupation. We can mention here many distinguished names, and the most important ones are worth notice: Jerzy Giedroyć, Józef Mackiewicz, Jan Nowak Jeziorański, or Jacek Kalabiński and his sensational translation of Lech Wałęsa's speech in the American Congress: "My naród" (We the people). Few journalists in Poland today could show off such command of English and the power of their rhetoric in their message to the world of Anglo-Saxons, who need to be known and understood, and not talked about hastily and without making sense.
There would be many more such journalists if the now independent country took the promotion of Poland abroad seriously. Without bilingual media, the American Polish community, i.e. 9 million people who do not speak Polish to a large extent, has no chance of maintaining its identity as a significant ethnic group in the USA. It draws knowledge about Poland from the American media.
The state of Polish journalism abroad is terrible. It sometimes happens that after the collapse of a given medium, journalists simply have no work. Portals and newspapers are mainly supported by money from the editors themselves.
Instead of helping Polish communities integrate, visits by politicians from Warsaw divide them. Warsaw media reports on the lives of Polish people are woven into a repetitive pattern: the report must include a photo of the politician, his name, children, and smiling girls in Łowicz or highlander costumes. Polish media usually never mention any names of Polish leaders or those who achieve any success. This is how the image of Polish people is perpetuated in Poland: simple, uninformed people – despite the facts that contradict this.
While other countries cooperate with their diasporas economically and politically, a rustic image of Poles living abroad is shown in Warsaw and around the world.
2. Repatriation of Poles from the East
The latest report of the Supreme Audit Office (NIK, Najwyższa Izba Kontroli) from November 2024 is a shocking document. As we read in the fragment:
The Polish state did not keep its promise to compensate the wrongs of people deported to the East during Stalinist times. The Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration, as the main body responsible for the repatriation process, in the period covered by the audit, unreliably carried out tasks related to the efficient organization of their return. The sudden increase in the number of people qualified for repatriation, too low a limit of financial resources, organizational and staff shortages and the inaction of state bodies in resolving these limitations led to the inefficiency of the system.
At the current pace of organising the settlement of repatriates in Poland (approx. 684 people per year), the process of repatriating the 15,200 waiting and interested people may take about 22 years, according to NIK’s assessment.
The most important findings of the audit are:
The actions taken by the relevant state authorities did not ensure the achievement of the objective indicated in the preamble to the Act on Repatriation – on urgent redress for wrongs done to Poles displaced by the Soviet authorities by repatriating them to the country. The actions taken by the Minister of Foreign Affairs were unreliable. As a body supporting the Minister of the Interior and Administration in the repatriation procedure, it was ineffective and did not ensure the efficient implementation of tasks in this process. At a time when there was a huge interest in the return to the country of people of Polish origin (since 2017), Polish consular offices were unprepared in terms of staff and organization to serve them efficiently. The Minister of Foreign Affairs failed to take adequate remedial action, so access to the consul was limited and the repatriation procedure was significantly prolonged.
The situation was confirmed by journalists from Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan whom I met in October 2024. The accounts of Ania Panisheva, arrested by the Lukashenka regime, who — in a very emotional account — recalled that Polish journalists from Belarus, and especially editor Andrzej Poczobut, are still waiting for help. The accounts of journalists from Ukraine, who spoke about help for Ukraine, but also about help for Poles in Ukraine, which is still missing. Poles from Kazakhstan are still waiting for repatriation, which is not happening.
3. Voting rights of the Polish diaspora
If one were to take a close look at Poles living abroad, i.e. all those who hold valid Polish passports and have valid voting rights guaranteed by the Polish constitution, who pay taxes in Poland, and are interested in the fate of Poland, one might get the impression that this is a large group of Polish citizens.
Professionally speaking, this requires research, which has never been done and probably never will be. Individual universities most often study parishes, because they are the easiest to count. From my over 20 years of experience, no one in Poland cares about thoroughly examining the Polish diaspora, about counting it. In the country on the Vistula, the prevailing opinion is that the Polish diaspora should not vote in Polish elections. But will anyone dare to ask an American who has lived in Germany for 30 years whether he has the right to elect the president of the USA?
In order to actively include Polonia in the Polish political bloodstream, the electoral law must be changed so that Polish citizens permanently residing abroad can nominate their own candidates in parliamentary elections. The idea was also described in Kuryer Polski by the well-known Polish journalist Stanisław Michalkiewicz, who says:
The proposal is that the constituency for candidates nominated by citizens permanently residing abroad would be a continent. One constituency would be North America. The second – South and Central America. The third – Europe, and the fourth – Australia. Each constituency would have 4 seats – 16 in total. Why so many? Because at least 15 MPs must be in the parliamentary group, whose chairman participates in the Seniors' Convention and has an influence on the course of legislative work in the Sejm. In this way, the foundations would be laid for a stable Polish lobby in the countries of settlement, and after 20-30 years such a lobby could gain significant influence for the benefit of itself and Poland. Because it must be a long march and you have to be prepared for it.
On August 16, 2019, PiS placed a nonpartisan, world-famous physician and Polish activist, Prof. Marek Rudnicki from Chicago, on its Senate election lists. Marek Rudnicki, former president of the Association of Polish Physicians in Chicago, was also appointed a member of the Polish Consultative Council at the Marshal of the Senate of the Republic of Poland. He is a man of very high personal culture, extraordinary diplomatic skills, very modest and demanding of himself, who has been working for at least 30 years to build bridges so that all Poles can communicate. However, in the absence of changes in the method of electing the Polonia candidate, as is, for example, guaranteed to the German minority, he lost, running in the famous Warsaw district 44 dominated by left-wing liberals.
For Professor Rudnicki, there was no plan B in case of defeat, and the whole matter of the Senate elections in 2019 is a disgrace for the ruling elites in Warsaw. It was a clear signal that the current electoral law for the Polish diaspora is a fiction. The Constitution of the Republic of Poland granted voting rights to all its citizens and it does not make the scope of citizens' political rights dependent on their place of residence. Do we understand this correctly there on the Vistula?
It is time to implement the idea of including one third of the Polish nation in the constitution and returning full voting rights to the Polish diaspora, i.e. mail-in voting, and creating a special constituency in Poland for the Polish diaspora and Poles from abroad, in which they could elect their representatives to the Sejm and Senate. If the Polish state wants to establish cooperation with the Polish diaspora, this is the right direction for the participation of the Polish diaspora in the political and social life of Poland. Examples from other countries show the benefits that a state can gain from proper relations with its diaspora.
4. Strategic Communication
Does the Polish state see the problem that in order to encourage the Polish diaspora to support the Polish cause abroad, minimal intellectual effort, political will and building tools in the form of a system for activating the Polish diaspora in the political life of the country of residence and in Poland are needed? Has anyone come up with the idea of creating an information system for Poles living in a given consular district to check the validity of passports, because elections to the Polish parliament are approaching, or to encourage those who feel Polish to obtain the Polish Card?
It would be worth taking a serious look at building an email and telephone system for communicating with Polish citizens abroad. If we want to effectively manage the diaspora through Polish consulates, which play an important role in activating it, they should encourage it to update its passports, obtain Polish passports for children born outside the Republic, organize a strategic communication system for communicating with a given consular district, or organize information campaigns about elections to individual chambers of the Polish parliament and presidential elections.
5. Polish education abroad
The last few Polish governments have made this problem a priority. Several departmental organizations have been established that support Catholic and secular Saturday schools, mostly financed by parents, as much as they can. However, the offer is aimed at children who, after graduating from Saturday school, have no other options for continuing their Polish education.
It is also worth noting that educational opportunities are available in most large cities. However, you only need to travel further outside the cities to find that such schools no longer exist.
The example of my son Daniel is worth mentioning briefly. He is a first-year student at Kansas State University and has no way of continuing his Polish studies. The only option is online language courses run by other universities, but accreditation and finding them are, as usual, very difficult.
The number of Polish language programs offered in the American university system is shrinking year by year. This is most often due to the fact that no one is being hired to fill the vacant positions of professors who have just retired. These positions are being terminated to the obvious satisfaction of the directors of Slavic studies departments, who are usually Russians, and they tend to avoid contacts with Polish government organizations.
Two years ago at NAWA (National Agency for Academic Exchange) I had a conversation on this topic, but there must first be an application and "translation into Mongolian in 5 copies", typical of Polish bureaucracy. This problem must be solved comprehensively at the level of the embassy, which will lead the program of introducing Polish language and culture to American universities.
There is also no educational activity for the business community about Poland's economic successes. So there is no one in the US who would present the book "Poland's New Golden Age: from the Periphery of Europe to its Center", written by Prof. Marcin Piątkowski.
The greatest achievement of Polish education in the US in the last decade is school IDs for children and trips by Polish officials and activists from Warsaw to give lectures in Polish in the catechism room. American universities are given a wide berth. It is time to fix this.
6. Research on Polonia
In my journalistic work I often use research on Polonia. Because I have a professional methodologist at home (my wife is a professor at Kansas State University), I can constantly distinguish serious research from ordinary waste paper.
Studies on Polonia usually concern Polish parishes, and the transcribed and never verified studies on Polonia media rarely concern secular Polonia. Prof. Dominik Stecuła of Ohio State University, whose latest study from 2010, "Polish Americans Today," should be the basis for large-scale studies on Polonia in the USA, deserves definite praise.
As Dr. Bogdan Kotnis writes in the Kuryer Polski in the article: "Academic Representation of Polonia":
It is high time for the Polish government to seriously consider funding Polonia departments at major universities in the country. The history of Polonia and its current state should be thoroughly studied and properly presented if Poland wants to use this huge demographic asset to strengthen its position on the world stage. Currently, research on the Polish diaspora, called Polonia, is fragmentary, uncoordinated with the country's development strategy and often commissioned from foreign sources.... Polonia exceeds 50% of the population of Poland. In times of low fertility and demographic constraints, it is in the national interest to carefully study Polonia as a demographic, cultural, political and economic base of Poland. In the ever-increasing role of global communication, every opportunity to increase the network of contacts with foreign countries is worth its weight in gold. Countries that implement a well-thought-out strategy to support their diaspora benefit in many ways: their status in the international arena, cultural recognition, economic benefits and security improve significantly… When studying current research on Polonia and its methodology, it is clear that most of it is based on a deficit model, i.e. the need for help and care. Almost no academic or political analysis treats Polonia research in terms of the possible benefits that Polonia could bring to Poland… It is the duty of independent Poland to study Polonia and share this knowledge with the world. Polonia is an undiscovered jewel, a diamond of global communication that should be extracted from the ashes of Poland's post-partition political catastrophe. If brought to full glory, Polonia can become a cornerstone, a bedrock of Poland's communication with the world in cultural, economic and national security dimensions. Let us hope that Polish universities will be adequately funded to open Polonia Departments and begin systematic interdisciplinary research on Polonia as a demographic potential and a hitherto underutilized treasure of Poland.”
Active and thoughtful inclusion of the Polish diaspora in the structures of the Polish state would help Poland take a leading position in the global dialogue on the current state and future of international connections between countries, cultures, nations, religions and economies.
In this essay I have deliberately omitted the great pain of Polonia, namely the double taxation of pensions. However, this problem, which has been unresolved for years, requires a separate article.
Conclusions
In order to defend Poland's good name and create the image of a modern Poland, especially in countries that are strategic for the Republic of Poland, Polonia must have the appropriate tools.
The most important of these is Polish English-language television, which would promote the Polish raison d'état 24 hours a day. Investment in Polonia media and their connection into a strategic network is necessary. An example of such a medium is Kuryer Polski, as a bilingual portal emerging in the USA, which not only reaches Americans of Polish origin, but also the global Polonia and Poles in Poland. However, we cannot act from a position of political preferences.
Today the government likes all liberals and leftists, tomorrow after the return of conservatives to power, the new government will prefer conservatives. However, such a scheme will not build anything, because the most important thing is the non-partisan Polish raison d'état. At the same time, the elites in Warsaw cannot wade into building a Byzantine bureaucracy in relations with the diaspora, where every action requires a tedious reflection in dozens of documents.
The idea of grants for the diaspora should be adopted by consulates, which usually have know-how about the organization or individuals from the diaspora. The policy created by Byzantine organizations dealing with Polonia is not always consistent with the current needs of Polonia. To sum up this thread: "Nothing about us without us." The matters concerning the American Polonia, the largest in the world, are decided without its participation by people from European organizations and from the aforementioned organizations from Warsaw. Is this how relations with Polonia are supposed to look like?
Let us establish, like the Hungarians here in the US, a governmental foundation that would support the building of a pro-Polish lobby — now, at the most important moment for Poland. Who is to lobby for Poland in Washington and other large centers? After the US elections, Polonia will once again gain nothing from the US administration.
Let's hire the best, effective specialists from the US, Canada and Poland, and not "relatives and friends" from the party. Let it be the "Poland Team", a team of professionals speaking and writing in English and Polish, who would be able to build such an integrated network of Polonia media and organizations. By making this investment, we could restore the former importance of pro-Polish lobbying for decades and have some influence on politics in the US.
Today, the biggest deficit for the American Polonia is the complete lack of leadership at the national and state levels. The activities of the Polonia are limited to traditional balls, taking selfies and getting excited about new gadgets. The politics of the Polonia are reduced to simply continuing and making sure that no one invents anything and does not drive the "continuing" to a specific job. After the last elections, everyone is so polarized that it is difficult to meet someone even in your own close neighborhood with whom you can find a common language.
It is time to wake up. The time for organic work has come again – training of leaders and future American politicians of Polish descent. The American Polonia must once again introduce its representatives to the United States Congress. It must have its governors, state representatives, city mayors and other important representatives in American government agencies, and on both sides, liberal and conservative.
Translation from Polish by Andrew Wozniewicz.
