Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced last 14 October that they are pushinng for the suspension of the right to asylum as human rights and civil society organizations argued that fundamental rights must be respected.
"It is our right and our duty to protect the Polish and European border," Tusk said on X. "Its security will not be negotiated."
Successive Polish governments have accused Belarus and Russia of organizing the mass transfer of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to the EU's eastern borders to destabilize the West. They view it as part of a hybrid war that they accuse Moscow of waging against the West as it continues its nearly three-year full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Some migrants have applied for asylum in Poland, but before the requests are processed, many travel across the EU’s border-free travel zone to reach Germany or other countries in Western Europe. Germany, on the other hand, recently responded by expanding border controls at all of its borders after a spate of extremist attacks. Tusk called Germany’s move "unacceptable."
Tusk announced his plan to suspend the right for migrants to seek asylum at a convention of his Civic Coalition recently. It's part of a strategy that will be presented to a Cabinet meeting on 18 October.
The decision does not affect Ukrainians, who have been given international protection in Poland. The United Nations estimates that about 1 million people from neighboring Ukraine have taken refuge from the war in Poland.
Dozens of nongovernmental organizations urged Tusk in an open letter to respect the right to asylum guaranteed by international conventions that Poland signed, including the Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and Poland's own constitution.
However, those who support Tusk's decision argue that the international conventions date to an earlier time before state actors engineered migration crises to harm other states.
"The Geneva Convention is from 1951 and really no one fully predicted that we would have a situation like on the Polish-Belarusian border," Maciej Duszczyk, a migration expert who serves as deputy interior minister, said in an interview on private radio RMF FM.
Tusk has argued that Finland also suspended accepting asylum applications after facing migration pressure on its border with Russia.
"The right to asylum is used instrumentally in this war and has nothing to do with human rights," Tusk said on X.