Poland and Hungary are tightening curbs on foreign labour, and the people paying for it are the workers, migrants and businesses caught between nationalist theatre and the state’s need to manage labour for capital. Economists warn the shift could hurt growth prospects in both countries, even as ruling centrists in Warsaw and Budapest scramble to prove they’re not “soft on immigration.”
Border Control for the Labour Market
Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar, who won in a landslide in April 2026, and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk, in power since 2023, are both moving to show they can police movement as hard as their nationalist rivals demand. Tusk’s government slashed work permits for non-EU citizens by 22% last year. Hungary’s new government in June 2026 stopped issuing worker visas to employees from the Philippines, Georgia and Armenia, calling it a first step towards regulating guest workers. The language changes. The logic doesn’t. States still decide who gets to cross, work and stay, then dress it up as “regulation.”
Public opinion polls are being used as cover for the clampdown. In Poland, around two-thirds of respondents in an IBRiS survey for Wirtualna Polska news website in January 2026 said Poland should accept fewer non-EU migrants. In Hungary, an analysis published by Republikon Institute earlier this month showed that almost half of Hungarians would not allow any migrants from poorer countries and another 40% would allow only a smaller number. The electoral circus and the polling industry do their usual work: measuring prejudice, laundering it through institutions, and handing it back as policy.
Marcin Tomaszewski, lead economist for the EU region at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said, “Fewer workers mean slower growth and less tax coming in, while an older population costs more in pensions and health.” He added, “Both are ageing before they are rich, and both only recently became places people move to rather than leave.” That’s the real contradiction here. The state wants labour when business needs it, then slams the gate when nationalist politics demands a performance.
Cheap Labour, Expensive Politics
The Polish Economic Institute forecast in 2024 that Poland, whose labour force already relies on over 1 million foreigners, around two-thirds of whom are Ukrainian, could have 2.1 million fewer workers by 2035. It said declines in industry alone could knock 6% to 8% off gross domestic product. A 2026 report by Deloitte, Ipsos and the Institute of Public Affairs said non-EU workers contributed up to 10.7% of Poland’s economic output last year, amid birth rates at their lowest since World War Two. So the system leans on migrant labour, then punishes migrants for being there. Efficient, if you’re a ministry.
Polish Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Duszczyk said, “If we changed our status from typical emigration country to migration one, we have to also adjust our whole system of functioning of the society,” and added that Poland did not want an economy based largely on cheap labour. That’s the state speaking plainly for once. It doesn’t want to admit dependence on the very workers it keeps precarious, delayed and disposable.
In June 2026, the ministry said it had issued eight times fewer work visas in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same period in 2022, though that comparison was affected by a change in rules for Ukrainians. Bureaucracy does what fences can’t always do fast enough. It slows lives down until the paperwork itself becomes a weapon.
Who Gets to Move, Who Gets Stuck
In Hungary, Magyar became embroiled in a public spat with Master Good, a poultry producer that said it might halt a factory expansion because of the new migration policies. Magyar accused the company, which had received state support, of trying to “threaten the government and the Hungarian people,” and said it could hire locally if it paid more. Owner Laszlo Barany said his 580 Filipino staff was essential given an ageing population. He said, “People get old, they retire and there is no demographic supply, while those entering the workforce are not looking for this type of job.”
That exchange lays out the whole arrangement in miniature. State support for business. Business dependence on migrant labour. Politicians posturing as defenders of “the people” while deciding which workers are useful and which are to be shut out. The border regime doesn’t stand apart from the economy. It sits inside it, sorting bodies for profit and then pretending the sorting is moral order.
In Poland, businesses complain about long processing times, with work permits taking over six months and residence permit applications taking nearly a year to process, said Nadia Winiarska, deputy director of the labour department at Polish business federation Lewiatan. Rahul Jha, a 35-year-old restaurant owner, said he lost a chef at his South Indian restaurant who got tired after waiting for over a year for a temporary residence permit. “Denmark gave him a five-year visa ... like immediately, a skilled visa. So he just moved out from here,” Jha said.
That’s Fortress Europe in practice: not just walls and patrols, but queues, delays, categories and arbitrary permission slips. The state doesn’t need to shout when it can simply make people wait until they leave. The result is the same. Movement is controlled from above, labour is extracted when convenient, and the people at the bottom are told this is how society functions.