Imagine more than 100,000 Armenians living in Poland as a society of street vendors. A few people got together a few years ago and tried opening a small school for the Armenian children, but they did not succeed because of financial reasons. At the moment, the majority of the children of the illegal Armenian immigrants are either at home, out on the streets, or helping their parents in the market. He came to Poland five years ago after losing his acting job in Yerevan. Poland was open to Armenians, so I chose to come here rather than one of the countries of the former Soviet Union.
Similar stories are everywhere.
There are the former factory workers, teachers, engineers, musicians, army deserters, and draft dodgers. The flow of Armenian immigration into Poland escalated in 1993 due to the devastating effects of a harsh winter, a total blockade by Azerbaijan and Turkey, and the collapse of the country's industrial infrastructure. Armen Saribekian was a shoe factory worker near Gyumri, a city which was devastated by the 1988 earthquake in Armenia. I lost my job, and for several years I tried to make a living selling cigarettes on street corners. Saribekian has since married a Ukrainian woman and become a Ukrainian citizen, a status which allows him to travel in an out of Poland without restrictions.