Warsaw is accused of taking bribes to situation EU visas to migrants, a lot of whom then crossed the border into Germany
Germany summoned Polish ambassador Dariusz Pawlos to the Inside Ministry in Berlin on Tuesday, demanding that he clarify an alleged scheme whereby migrants from Asia and Africa have been offered EU visas for 1000’s of euros every.
Along with summoning Pawlos, German Inside Minister Nancy Faeser held a gathering together with her Polish counterpart, Reuters reported.
Poland’s Overseas Ministry and consulates are accused of issuing visas to migrants from Asia and Africa with out enough background checks, so long as bribes have been paid to intermediaries. The scheme was uncovered by Polish media shops earlier this month, who claimed that as much as 350,000 visas have been issued this manner since 2021, with visas costing $4,000-5,000 every.
Poland is a member of the EU’s visa-free Schengen zone, which means that anybody who obtains a Polish visa can freely enter 26 different EU nations.
It’s unclear what number of migrants took benefit of this association to enter Germany. Nonetheless, lots of of additional border police have been deployed on the frontier with Poland to scan for suspicious vacationers, Reuters reported.
In line with one report from Poland’s Onet information website, former Deputy Minister of Overseas Affairs Piotr Wawrzyk organized visas for a bunch of Indians posing as a Bollywood movie crew. The Indians paid as much as $40,000 every for these visas, earlier than utilizing them to aim to enter the US by way of Mexico. US immigration brokers reportedly tipped off the Polish authorities after they encountered the group on the American border.
Polish Overseas Minister Zbigniew Rau has dismissed the scandal as “faux information,” insisting that solely round 200 paperwork have been issued with any “irregularities.” Nonetheless, Wawrzyk was dismissed from his publish final month, and eleven different suspects have been arrested final week. Wawrzyk was hospitalized after trying to commit suicide final week, Polish media reported.
The controversy erupted one month forward of parliamentary elections in Poland, the place the ruling PiS celebration has positioned itself as being robust on migration. The federal government additionally plans to carry a referendum on immigration and border safety, through which residents can be requested whether or not they help accepting “1000’s of unlawful immigrants from the Center East and Africa” as a part of an EU relocation plan.
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