The immigration to Poland which followed the collapse of communism in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 was something for which Poland was legislatively, administratively and financially unprepared. These two events, along with EU accession negotiations in the 1990s, forced Poland to try to put in place a framework to deal with immigration. One of the methods employed in the field of irregular immigration was to implement regularisation or legalisation programmes. Poland`s first two attempts at regularisation, carried out in 2003 and 2007, were abjectly ineffective. This was due to overly-restrictive criteria and failure to publicise the programmes amongst the target group. The legislature has finally recognised the need to provide yet another opportunity for illegally-resident third-country nationals to regularise their status and draft legislation published in November 2010 suggests that lessons have been learnt from past mistakes. Meanwhile the Polish courts have played an important role in vindicating the human rights of irregular immigrants by giving effect to the Article 8 ECHR protection of family and private life in the face of administrative decisions to expel which fail to take account of Polandu2019s obligations under Article 8.