polish immigration to the UK

« Polish immigration to the UK Slide 1 Dzien dobry.

I will present you some aspects of the Polish immigration in the UK. Slide 2 Polish migration to the UK has happened for a long time but the main part of it started during the Second World War in 1940, with the establishment in London of the Polish government accompanied with thousands of soldiers and airmen. Slide 3 After the war, about 250,000 Poles stay in Britain, refusing to return to communist Poland.

In 1947, the Polish Resettlement Act is passed by the British parliament, offering British citizenship to more than 200,000 former troops and their families.

Many Polish clubs are established during this time.

Slide 4 Before 1989, people in Poland were generally not able to keep their passport at home and needed permission to leave Poland which belonged to the communist bloc.

With the fall of the communism in 1989, Polish migration intensified but migrants always needed a visa. Slide 5 Only from 2004, with the integration of Poland to the Schengen area, mobility of Poles was much easier as they only needed their identity card.

13,000 Polish migrants were expected, but in fact around 1 million Eastern Europeans, mainly from Poland, came to the UK. Slide 6 Due to this long tradition, in 2015, the Polish community became the first ethnic minority in Britain, before Indians.

In 2017, estimations gave 1 million Polish nationals living in the UK.

Polish is now the second language after English. Slide 7. »