Long closed to any form of immigration, Romania, like most countries in central and eastern Europe, has opened up to foreigners, under pressure from employers who complain about the lack of labor. It arrived here after millions of Romanians left for EU countries, after the accession in 2007. Now there are over 120,000 non-European foreigners living in Romania, of which over 2,000 in Arad, and Le Monde spoke to several among them, to find out their state of mind and what they think about Romania.
“I came here six months ago to work for Glovo,” said Naresh Chaudhary, a 38-year-old Nepali. He works in Bucharest and shares a room in a worker’s dormitory with three other Nepalese. He says that he receives twice as much money as in Nepal and that he arrived in Romania “thanks to a recruitment agency”, according to b1tv.ro.
Next to him, Sherpa Pemba, a 32-year-old Nepalese, admits that he had never heard of Romania before coming here. He says that “Romanians are nice”, but he is disappointed with the working conditions here: he works over 11 hours a day, but still fails to reach the minimum level of deliveries required by his employer.
“I still haven’t been able to send money to my family,” complained Sherpa Pemba, despite the contract guaranteeing him a monthly salary of 550 euros.
Most Asian migrants do not want to settle in Romania with their families, but to go to Western Europe.
“We lost a lot of Sri Lankans and Vietnamese, who preferred to leave illegally, especially to Portugal,” complained the head of a group of luxury restaurants in Bucharest.
Instead, Sam Fernando (30 years old), who came from Sri Lanka in 2019 to work as a bartender, is now a car mechanic, earns up to 4,000 lei a month and started going fishing with his Romanian-speaking colleagues, a language he is beginning to learn. In addition, he convinced two other fellow citizens to follow him.
“Of course there are countries where you can earn better, but I like it here,” said the young man.
One of the fellow citizens he convinced to come to Romania sings in his spare time and has a band called “RO94” – from “Romania” and the telephone code of his country, Sri Lanka (+94). In the autumn of last year, the band held the first concert of Sri Lankan music in the history of Romania.
