Journalist Aleksey Dzikavitski, on behalf of the association "Belarusian Diaspora in Poland," contacted the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He published the Polish ministry's response on his Facebook page.
"In January, we sent a letter to the ministry, in which we expressed the opinion that treating minor traffic violations as a 'threat to public safety' is excessive and should not deprive people of hope for obtaining citizenship," writes Aleksey Dzikavitski.
In early March, the Association received an eight-page response from the ministry, signed by Monika Prus, Director of the Citizenship and Repatriation Department. Here's what the response states:
1. The concept of "threat to public order" — which is how voivodes (provincial governors) interpret traffic violations — is not static; it changes over time. The attitude towards treating traffic violations as minor is already a thing of the past. Nowadays, authorities are taking various measures, including legislative ones, to ensure that traffic violations are perceived as a real threat to public order and safety. Therefore, citizenship applicants must take this into account and cannot count on obtaining citizenship if they have traffic violations.
2. The Ministry believes that when considering whether a citizenship applicant poses a threat to public order, a so-called "prediction of the applicant's behavior in terms of traffic law compliance" must be made. In other words, it is assessed whether there are grounds to believe that the foreigner, after obtaining citizenship, will violate traffic rules. For this, it is taken into account how many times the person has violated traffic rules and whether there is a tendency to systematically ignore the rules."
"In this regard, it can conditionally be said: if you have one traffic violation, the chance of obtaining citizenship still remains. If there are more violations — the more there are, the lower your chances of citizenship. And if you have violated traffic rules several times within one year, then the chances of obtaining citizenship are seriously reduced," summarizes Aleksey Dzikavitski.
Comments