Lawyer Witold Klaus founded the Association for Legal Intervention (Stowarzyszenie Interwencji Prawnej, or SIP) in 2005 with a group of colleagues whose common goal was to do more for Poland’s marginalized citizens.

The SIP’s activities are carried out by four sections. The leading section, which occupies the majority of the association’s 30 employees, provides services to foreigners. Its task is to assist all disaffected foreigners, from economic migrants to asylum seekers.

“Last year we worked with over 500 forced migrants and almost 600 other foreigners, most of them Ukrainians,” said Mr Klaus. Considering that normally one person from each distressed family comes for help, the real number of migrants assisted by the SIP reaches into the thousands.

The Freedom section, devoted to providing prisoners with legal advice, is active in five prisons around Warsaw.

“We can’t marginalize people because they are criminals. They have done bad things and have been punished, and they would like to join society again,” explained Mr Klaus.

The Families section is devoted to adoptive and foster families and works mainly with Polish citizens.

Finally, the Restorative Justice section reviews cases heard in Polish courts and addresses a very broad spectrum of legal issues, including those covered by juvenile, civil, family and labor legislation.

“Our main goal is to help people who are poor or discriminated against to manage their lives in Poland. We do this mostly through legal counseling, but a few years ago we decided that this was not enough. We decided we had to build a more complex system.”

Through adopting this broader approach, SIP found Aleksandra Chrzanowska, an integration counselor who helps migrants, including Chechen asylum seekers, with everyday life problems.

Ms Chrzanowska speaks Russian, English, French and Polish, and is assisted by an equally multilingual group of volunteers.

Overcoming barriers

“The language and cultural barriers are important,” she explains. “Many of the asylum seekers we see are ill. Most of them live in very unstable conditions, and many suffer from quite severe medical and psychological conditions,” she said.

Asylum seekers are entitled to medical treatment in Poland, but the state doesn’t provide interpreter services, without which, according to Ms Chrzanowska, the majority of hospital visits would be completely useless. The association says it organized over 1,000 interpreter-assisted hospital visits in the last year.

Chechens are the main asylum seekers in Poland. According to data from the Office of Repatriation and Aliens, last year 9,643 people, among them 5,258 from Russia, applied for refugee status in Poland. According to the office, the overwhelming majority of the Russian asylum seekers were from Chechnya, a federal subject of Russia.

But according to SIP, increasingly fewer benefit from the state’s protection.

“Until about a year and a half ago, one to four percent of all requests from Chechnya would receive refugee status and almost all others would get subsidiary protection from the state (protection for humanitarian reasons rather than for political reasons), so that they had the right to work in Poland,” explained Ms Chrzanowska. “Now the tendency is not to give them any protection at all.”

The reason for this, according to SIP, is that Polish authorities consider the situation in Chechnya to be improving. But asylum seekers from Chechnya keep arriving and the tales they tell remain grim.

“From what we hear from the refugees, the situation in Chechnya is different, but not better. Although it is not a state of war anymore, it is very difficult and often dangerous for families to remain neutral and not side with either rebel groups or the government,” said Ms Chrzanowska.

“When such families who are not involved in political movements or social groups in Chechnya come here and give their status interview, Polish authorities often conclude that they are not in danger and so they are sent home.”

“I think most other NGOs share our assessment of the situation,” added Mr Klaus.

Under the political radar

According to the association, the issue of asylum raises few eyebrows in the Polish media, and is not a broadly discussed issue in Polish society.

“With 38 million Poles and around 10,000 asylum seekers, politicians don’t even perceive this as a problem,” said Ms Chrzanowska.

On the other hand, for Witold Klaus, the lack of public attention also means that in Poland migrants have not become pawns manipulated by political discourse, as happens in so many other European countries.

“Often when the problems of migrants are brought into politics it’s not pretty, and I am very glad that this question is not prey to political games in Poland,” he commented.

However, the lack of social and political interest now could also count against immigrants and those who support them in the long-term.

“We would [like to] have a chance to solve some problems now and improve the state’s relationship with migrants, because it is inevitable, in Poland as elsewhere, that their numbers will grow,” warned Ms Chrzanowska.

Despite these shortcomings, both Ms Chrzanowska and Mr Klaus are sure that the situation of migrants in Poland is improving.

“We always have new problems of course, but we would not even have the possibility to face them if we were not already at a certain level,” said Mr Klaus.