Similar to the west. Immigrants will slowly grow to be the majority of low-lower middle class while nationals will slowly shift to middle-high.
Same in Poland. I moved to Poland 2 years ago and the demographic composition of my city is genuinely changing before my eyes. I’m seeing way more Indians and Bangladeshis in particular, Azerbaijanis, Arabs, people from the -stans (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan etc), black Africans etc. Pretty much my entire social circle have expressed similar views, so it’s not only me noticing this. It goes without saying r.e. Ukrainians and Belarussians, I hear Russian on the streets of my city pretty much as frequently as Polish.
Despite the government’s anti-immigration rhetoric, Poland is actually an extremely easy country to get in to. I personally know quite a lot Arabs and Indians who came to study here and find work in order to leverage that into moving to Germany/US/Canada/UK etc.
A generation ago Romanians queued for food. Today in Bucharest the queues are back, but those standing in them are not Romanian. In one street Ukrainian refugees line up in front of an aid-distribution centre. In another Nepalis, Bangladeshis and others wait outside an immigration office to renew work and residence permits. Like Italy in the 1970s, Romania is on the cusp of switching from a country of emigrants to one of immigrants.
Romania’s economy has been growing steadily for a decade, last year by 4.7%. In 2010 gdp per person, adjusted for prices, was 53% of the eu average; by 2021 it was 74%. Meanwhile the population shrank from 23.2m in 1990 to 19m today. Birth rates collapsed after the revolution of 1989, and millions have emigrated. The country now faces severe labour shortages.
The afternoon queue outside Bucharest’s immigration office is long. Nikky, a Nigerian nanny, says she would ideally like to work in Britain, but would rather live legally here than illegally there. Atharv, a software engineer from India, and Nico, a barman from Sri Lanka, speak no Romanian, but this has proved no obstacle for them so far. So hard is it to get into the office that Nico slept on the pavement overnight; the other two arrived at dawn. Suddenly there is an uproar: someone they have not seen before is attempting to queue-jump past them.
Hotels, bars and restaurants are desperate for workers, but the biggest gap is in construction. Alexandru Baiculescu, deputy general manager of Hidro Salt, a construction firm, has 350 employees. Of these 200 are foreigners, mostly Sri Lankans and Vietnamese. They are recruited via agencies, but Romania’s bureaucracy is so overwhelmed by the exploding demand that many of those invited never arrive: they are filched by other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, in the months before their Romanian visas come through.
Mr Baiculescu pays $1,000 a month plus accommodation and food, but up to 40% of his new recruits leave within months to try their luck illegally in better-paid countries. “I cannot expand because of these problems,” he says. Romania’s bureaucracy “is so complicated that many companies simply give up” on importing new workers, says Monica Roman, an academic studying immigration. Instead they try to lure those that bigger companies have succeeded in getting in. Many of the workers, who come to escape desperate poverty, are happy to accept “any kind of job abroad”.
Adriana Iftime, director-general of the Federation of Construction Company Employers, says the sector needs a minimum of 100,000 new workers by the end of 2024. Builders want to meet the demand for work on infrastructure that is being stimulated by the eu’s post-pandemic reconstruction funds. Romania will get €27bn ($29.8bn), of which up to €17bn will go towards construction, says Ms Iftime. Include other eu funding streams and Romania could receive more than €80bn by 2027. Foreign workers, she says, “are the solution when there is no other solution”.
In 2017 Romania had a quota of 3,000 permits a year for non-eu workers. That had soared to 100,000 by last year, but many were taken up with renewals by workers already in the country. Oana Toiu, an mp who serves on parliament’s labour committee, says that while Romania does require foreign workers as a “quick fix” for its labour shortages, many of the people the country needs are already in it. The problem is that the social-security system and punitive tax rules make it pointless for many people to work part-time, especially mothers with small children. “There is a huge space for having proactive measures for Romanians to step into these roles.”
Many Romanians are still emigrating for better pay elsewhere, but others are returning home. Meanwhile Romania’s foreign-born population is growing. By the end of 2022 there were 113,520 non-eu nationals in the country, an increase of 110% in five years. There were also 54,765 eu citizens, 113,000 Ukrainian refugees and an estimated 200,000 immigrants from neighbouring Moldova (although most of these have Romanian citizenship). Mircea Mocanu, who heads the un’s International Organisation for Migration’s office in Bucharest, says her outfit calculates that excluding Moldovans, by the end of the decade there will be 600,000 foreigners in Romania. That is a big and very rapid change.
I notice them too. It warms my heart to see them while drawing paralels to Romanian working abroad.
I know many WE are mad about this, I know one day many Romanians will be mad about this, but for the moment is a reassurance that things are going better in Romania.
In my early childhood the only foreign workers were the diplomatic staff, spies, and very rarely people from other dictatorship sent by their dictators in exchance programs.
> ”Mr Baiculescu pays $1,000 a month plus accommodation and food, but up to 40% of his new recruits leave within months to try their luck illegally in better-paid countries.”
I’d says there’s something wrong with the Romanian immigration system, but that’s what got me pilloried last time. Oh, those very inconvenient facts!
> “Builders want to meet the demand for work on infrastructure that is being stimulated by the eu’s post-pandemic reconstruction funds.”
I’m all for developing Romanian infrastructure, but has it ever occurred to anybody that pumping money into an already overstimulated economy is a bad idea? It’s not like you cannot try a more sustainable solution.
EDIT: I see the downvote brigade is out in force again. Instead of just being butthurt, how about trying to express your disagreement in a coherent way?
Waiting for silly evil comments about how Romania attracts Asians into EU (while ex-colonial powers brought tens millions non Europeans into Europe).
Bucharest is has gotten amazingly diverse recently.
I have great news for you folks: companies will delocalize to you as long as is convenient.
The moment they find cheaper qualified workers elsewhere they’re gone.
Enjoy this decade (probably less).
Romania situation with migration is improving rapidly, while net migration is still negative, [it is improving each year](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ROU/romania/net-migration) and likely within 2-3 years net migration will become positive and within 5+ years net migration of Romanian nationals will become positive.
Same happening in all other Eastern EU countries, here in Lithuania we have net positive migration for ~5 years now, and currently there are more Lithuanian nationals returning back to Lithuania than emigrating.
When Romanian labour has such a bad rep even Romanians are getting foreigner labour.
13 comments
Can’t read the full article due to a paywall
Similar to the west. Immigrants will slowly grow to be the majority of low-lower middle class while nationals will slowly shift to middle-high.
Same in Poland. I moved to Poland 2 years ago and the demographic composition of my city is genuinely changing before my eyes. I’m seeing way more Indians and Bangladeshis in particular, Azerbaijanis, Arabs, people from the -stans (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan etc), black Africans etc. Pretty much my entire social circle have expressed similar views, so it’s not only me noticing this. It goes without saying r.e. Ukrainians and Belarussians, I hear Russian on the streets of my city pretty much as frequently as Polish.
Despite the government’s anti-immigration rhetoric, Poland is actually an extremely easy country to get in to. I personally know quite a lot Arabs and Indians who came to study here and find work in order to leverage that into moving to Germany/US/Canada/UK etc.
A generation ago Romanians queued for food. Today in Bucharest the queues are back, but those standing in them are not Romanian. In one street Ukrainian refugees line up in front of an aid-distribution centre. In another Nepalis, Bangladeshis and others wait outside an immigration office to renew work and residence permits. Like Italy in the 1970s, Romania is on the cusp of switching from a country of emigrants to one of immigrants.
Romania’s economy has been growing steadily for a decade, last year by 4.7%. In 2010 gdp per person, adjusted for prices, was 53% of the eu average; by 2021 it was 74%. Meanwhile the population shrank from 23.2m in 1990 to 19m today. Birth rates collapsed after the revolution of 1989, and millions have emigrated. The country now faces severe labour shortages.
The afternoon queue outside Bucharest’s immigration office is long. Nikky, a Nigerian nanny, says she would ideally like to work in Britain, but would rather live legally here than illegally there. Atharv, a software engineer from India, and Nico, a barman from Sri Lanka, speak no Romanian, but this has proved no obstacle for them so far. So hard is it to get into the office that Nico slept on the pavement overnight; the other two arrived at dawn. Suddenly there is an uproar: someone they have not seen before is attempting to queue-jump past them.
Hotels, bars and restaurants are desperate for workers, but the biggest gap is in construction. Alexandru Baiculescu, deputy general manager of Hidro Salt, a construction firm, has 350 employees. Of these 200 are foreigners, mostly Sri Lankans and Vietnamese. They are recruited via agencies, but Romania’s bureaucracy is so overwhelmed by the exploding demand that many of those invited never arrive: they are filched by other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, in the months before their Romanian visas come through.
Mr Baiculescu pays $1,000 a month plus accommodation and food, but up to 40% of his new recruits leave within months to try their luck illegally in better-paid countries. “I cannot expand because of these problems,” he says. Romania’s bureaucracy “is so complicated that many companies simply give up” on importing new workers, says Monica Roman, an academic studying immigration. Instead they try to lure those that bigger companies have succeeded in getting in. Many of the workers, who come to escape desperate poverty, are happy to accept “any kind of job abroad”.
Adriana Iftime, director-general of the Federation of Construction Company Employers, says the sector needs a minimum of 100,000 new workers by the end of 2024. Builders want to meet the demand for work on infrastructure that is being stimulated by the eu’s post-pandemic reconstruction funds. Romania will get €27bn ($29.8bn), of which up to €17bn will go towards construction, says Ms Iftime. Include other eu funding streams and Romania could receive more than €80bn by 2027. Foreign workers, she says, “are the solution when there is no other solution”.
In 2017 Romania had a quota of 3,000 permits a year for non-eu workers. That had soared to 100,000 by last year, but many were taken up with renewals by workers already in the country. Oana Toiu, an mp who serves on parliament’s labour committee, says that while Romania does require foreign workers as a “quick fix” for its labour shortages, many of the people the country needs are already in it. The problem is that the social-security system and punitive tax rules make it pointless for many people to work part-time, especially mothers with small children. “There is a huge space for having proactive measures for Romanians to step into these roles.”
Many Romanians are still emigrating for better pay elsewhere, but others are returning home. Meanwhile Romania’s foreign-born population is growing. By the end of 2022 there were 113,520 non-eu nationals in the country, an increase of 110% in five years. There were also 54,765 eu citizens, 113,000 Ukrainian refugees and an estimated 200,000 immigrants from neighbouring Moldova (although most of these have Romanian citizenship). Mircea Mocanu, who heads the un’s International Organisation for Migration’s office in Bucharest, says her outfit calculates that excluding Moldovans, by the end of the decade there will be 600,000 foreigners in Romania. That is a big and very rapid change.
I notice them too. It warms my heart to see them while drawing paralels to Romanian working abroad.
I know many WE are mad about this, I know one day many Romanians will be mad about this, but for the moment is a reassurance that things are going better in Romania.
In my early childhood the only foreign workers were the diplomatic staff, spies, and very rarely people from other dictatorship sent by their dictators in exchance programs.
> ”Mr Baiculescu pays $1,000 a month plus accommodation and food, but up to 40% of his new recruits leave within months to try their luck illegally in better-paid countries.”
I’d says there’s something wrong with the Romanian immigration system, but that’s what got me pilloried last time. Oh, those very inconvenient facts!
> “Builders want to meet the demand for work on infrastructure that is being stimulated by the eu’s post-pandemic reconstruction funds.”
I’m all for developing Romanian infrastructure, but has it ever occurred to anybody that pumping money into an already overstimulated economy is a bad idea? It’s not like you cannot try a more sustainable solution.
EDIT: I see the downvote brigade is out in force again. Instead of just being butthurt, how about trying to express your disagreement in a coherent way?
Waiting for silly evil comments about how Romania attracts Asians into EU (while ex-colonial powers brought tens millions non Europeans into Europe).
😳🤔
Me after reading the headline: https://imgur.com/YevmQ7V
Bucharest is has gotten amazingly diverse recently.
I have great news for you folks: companies will delocalize to you as long as is convenient.
The moment they find cheaper qualified workers elsewhere they’re gone.
Enjoy this decade (probably less).
Romania situation with migration is improving rapidly, while net migration is still negative, [it is improving each year](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ROU/romania/net-migration) and likely within 2-3 years net migration will become positive and within 5+ years net migration of Romanian nationals will become positive.
Same happening in all other Eastern EU countries, here in Lithuania we have net positive migration for ~5 years now, and currently there are more Lithuanian nationals returning back to Lithuania than emigrating.
When Romanian labour has such a bad rep even Romanians are getting foreigner labour.