In a referendum, Poland will ask citizens whether they want to accept illegal migrants

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that the government will ask citizens in a referendum whether they want to accept "thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa" ​​as part of the European Union's relocation plan.

Moravjecki announced the referendum in a video published on social networks.

His Pravo i Pravda party is seeking to retain power in October's parliamentary elections and wants to use the immigration issue in its election campaign, the same tactics that helped it come to power in 2015.

Poland is currently a refuge for more than a million Ukrainian refugees, who are white and Christian, however, state officials have so far repeated many times that they consider Muslims and others from other cultures a threat to their cultural identity and national security.

The Polish government wants to hold the referendum at the same time as the parliamentary elections, scheduled for October 15. Morawiecki said the question would be: "Do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa under the forced resettlement mechanism imposed by the European bureaucracy?".

In June, EU interior ministers backed a plan to share responsibility for migrants entering Europe without permission, at the root of one of Europe's longest-running political crises.

The European migrant crisis began eight years ago, after more than a million people fleeing the war in Syria entered the EU and strained reception capacities in Greece and Italy.

Since then, the 27 EU member states have been arguing over which country should take responsibility for migrants entering without permission, as well as whether member states are obliged to help them settle.