As Jo Harper reports, the issue is also what kind of Europe do we want to live in?
Poland, once a multi-national, multi-ethnic and multi-faith nation, is now one of the most homogenous countries in Europe but its attitudes to foreigners, not just refugees, is today ambiguous, to say the least.
Britain, on the other hand, was once a pretty homogenous place but now is the land of many cultures, including Polish.
How times change and are changing.
As Poland wonders how many refugees it wants to take in, UK PM David Cameron has suggested that Britain stop paying benefits to children living in Poland one of whose parents work in the UK.
Under British social security rules child benefits are paid out to children who live in Poland while at least one of their parents works in Britain.
These parents are currently entitled to £20.30 a week for the first child and £13.40 for the second one. In 2012, about 24,000 EU migrants whose children did not live in the country, about half of these from Poland, claimed child benefit in Britain. Let’s say about 12,000 people.
It’s a statistical irrelevance, but indicative of something deeper.
According to the 2011 census, 579,000 Poles live in the UK. That is less than 1% of the population.
A report by the UK tax office in 2012 noted that Poles are 45% less likely to receive benefits than UK natives, while they pay 34% more in taxes than they receive in benefits.
Since 2002 almost 1.2 million Poles have been issued with National Insurance numbers allowing them to work, and pay taxes in Britain, meaning they are entitled to the same level of child and other welfare benefits as British workers.
Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain's EU membership and the issue of immigrants’ rights to benefits is high up on his list
But it’s hard to believe that a party of business, so beholden to the idea that helping the rich become richer helps everyone else, should now be worrying about benefit claims by immigrants.
Immigrants from Poland and elsewhere effectively help hold down wages in the UK. Largely un-unionised, mobile, flexible, prepared to work for less than their British counterparts and do things their UK neighbours don’t want to and often better, Polish immigrants cannot be blamed for acting in self-interest.
British unions are not in the streets fighting for unionisation of Polish workers and equal rights for all. Why bother unionizing if you come to the country for a short period, work hard and go home.
British business has had 11 years of cheap labour, alongside corporate tax cuts and deregulation and the party of business, the Conservatives, has seen donations and sponsorships boom over the last 30 years from the corporate sector that has benefited from cheap and flexible immigrant – largely Polish – labour.
But living in Poland is sometimes a painful experience. An often populist rhetoric flows easily off the tongue, whether not wanting refugees or chastising Britain for contemplating how to deal with its own immigration situation.
Poland still has 11% unemployment, even after over EUR 80 billion of EU funds has been injected into its economy in the last 11 years, is one that has not really started to broach the issue of employment generation.
This lack of civic and political discussion is perhaps in part a legacy of communism, still, but also the lack of a social agenda among centre-right parties that have dominated the political landscape for the last 11 years since Poland joined the EU.
Poland is not poor any more. As we are told at every opportunity, the country has an emerging, burgeoning, middle class.
Poland has said it will block Cameron’s proposed amendment to EU treaty on welfare payments, which can only be changed with the unanimous support of all Europe's 28 countries.
The Cameron stance has also created a crisis in the Tory’s grouping in the European parliament.
The opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party – the second largest member of the European Conservatives and Reformists group after the Conservatives – looks likely to win in October’s election. And then the fun might well begin.
Looking at this from Warsaw one sees a Poland that one hand reminded the world that freedom of movement and Solidarity are central to the European project, but on the other hand a land that still harbours some serious doubts about opening up its own doors.