Also from Sri Lanka, 46-year-old Chaminda arrived in Romania to work in a warehouse, but the pay was not what he had been promised, so he switched jobs as soon as he secured a residence permit.
Six months later, however, the company was behind on wages and ceased operating, leaving Chaminda jobless and on a 90-day deadline to find new work and obtain a new permit.
Unable to afford a trafficker, Chaminda found his own way into Hungary and eventually Italy. As in the case of Vinith, it was 2022.
From pillar to post
According to Eurostat data, between 2021 – when Romania first opened its doors to non-EU workers – and 2024, Italy requested Romania to process 4,415 asylum claims as per the Dublin Regulation, which requires the EU country where a migrant or refugee first enters the bloc to process their asylum claim.
In the period 2015-2020 there were just 211 such requests; between 2021 and 2024, France sent Romania 5,294 such requests, Germany 6,412 and Austria 5,409.
“My last job in Romania was in a city near the border, so I started researching how to cross into Hungary,” said Chaminda. “I found a river and checked where it went. It flowed through Hungary and several other countries. I followed the river until I reached a big road, like a highway, and I got on a bus. That’s how I got here, to Italy.”
Madalina Petre, a legal expert specialising in recruitment and migration-related bureaucracy, told BIRN: “Many times, the bundle of papers sent to secure a visa interview at the embassy includes a work contract that is different from the one that migrants sign upon arrival in Romania. And often that contract mentions a much higher salary. On top of that, agencies in their home countries tell them the gross wage but never mention anything about Romania’s taxes.”
For many migrant workers, applying for asylum in Romania is not an option: almost two-thirds of all applications in 2024 were rejected. Those who did secure some form of protection were from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and Sudan.
In the first 10 months of 2025, immigration authorities escorted 590 people out of the country; a further 1,907 ‘voluntary return’ decisions were taken.
Georgiana Badescu of the NGO Legal Resources Centre, which specialises in offering legal advice, took to Facebook in November to ask Romania’s General Inspectorate for Immigration, GII, what it was doing for migrants.
“Sometimes I seriously wonder how GII thinks these abuses are solved through deportations,” Badescu wrote. “Migrants kept in the shadow economy are ‘solved’ with deportations. Abused migrants are ‘solved’ with deportations. Migrants scammed and defrauded are ‘solved’ with deportations. But are you doing anything else for them? Yes – for them, not for employers, not for yourselves. For the migrants.”
The GII says returns are a last resort and “strictly administrative”.
Badescu disputed this, saying: “In fact, it’s practically the only thing they do once someone falls into illegality.”
Chaminda ended up in the coastal town of Sorrento, southwestern Italy, where he had a friend.
“There are many restaurants there and some people work illegally there,” he said. “In big hotels they only hire documented workers, but in smaller, less-known areas, you can easily find illegal work.”
Italy’s National Institute of Statistics estimates that in 2023, more than three million people, migrants as well as Italian nationals, were working illegally in Italy.
Eventually, Chaminda was able to apply for asylum and, with his papers in order, find legal work in a restaurant.
“I work here with a contract, and I now have everything,” he said.
With a mortgage to pay in Sri Lanka, he said he has no intention of returning home regardless of whether or not he is granted asylum, knowing that he still has to earn the money to pay back the bank.
“The EU cannot stop this because the EU is the one inviting illegal people to the country,” said Sirajul Amin, administrator of HCM Infinity, a major Bangladeshi recruitment agency with branches in Albania, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro. “Why? First of all – cheap labour, so they can exploit the workers; secondly – no need to pay taxes; thirdly – the government doesn’t need to take care of these people.”
“If they are sick or jobless, the government doesn’t need to pay anything because they are not registered in the system. Unofficially, everybody is inviting illegal people.”
In 2024, Romanian investigative media outlet Rise Project revealed the involvement of former interior ministry employees, businessmen with criminal records and politicians in the exploitation of thousands of non-EU who arrived in Romania only to then be abandoned by the recruitment agencies that brought them there.
In October 2025, investigative outlet Snoop reported that trafficking and fraud networks disguised as recruitment agencies are charging migrants for their ‘services’, promising work permits but then sabotaging their applications, knowing that an undocumented migrant will find it nearly impossible to secure justice in court.
Hiring a lawyer costs upwards of 1,500 euros and many simply take the money to open a case and then abandon it. The court process can take years, during which the migrant must live in hiding to avoid deportation and can only work in the grey economy.
*The names of the migrant workers quoted in this article have been changed to protect their identities.