Immigration

According to Oxford Dictionaries, immigration is the international movement of

people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess
citizenship in order to settle, or reside there or to take up employment as a migrant worker or
temporarily as a foreign worker.
Firstly, we’ll talk about immigration to Romania. This shouldn’t be a big concern, as
Romania’s economy is pretty poor, along the transportation and bureaucracy systems -
things that should make anyone hesitate when choosing the place to live and work for a
considerable amount of time in the future. However, immigrants are not always able to
choose from a big list of countries, due to their immigration policy.
Most of the immigrants that come to Romania are from Republic of Moldova, Turkey
and Asia1. Usually, they work in agriculture, constructions, transportation and other middle
level jobs. Although Romania’s minimum wage is about 446 EUR/month 2, this only applied
for romanian citizen while immigrants had a higher than normal minimum wage. This system
created inequities around romanian business owners and normal workers, which lead to a
new law to be adopted 3, a law that made the minimum wage to be the same both for
romanians and foreigners.
The Romanians are usually open to the idea of immigration, because a big
percentage of Romania’s workforce is abroad. However, racism and the low level of
education among the masses puts its fingerprint sometimes4.
Coming back to the previous paragraph, since the end of the communism,
Romanians have always tried to raise their standard of living thus many of them immigrated
in Central, Northern and West Europe. The numbers 5 show that over 9 millions of
Romanians are working abroad. Some specialists say that the money coming from abroad is
the only thing that holds Romanian economy at an almost floating level.
As shown above, immigration is and will always be a phenomenon. I consider that we
must accept migrants as long as they respect our laws and our culture.

1 https://adevarul.ro/news/societate/analizA-vin-cei-mai-imigranti-fac-romania-
1_5bf516f1df52022f75a9438f/index.html
2 https://tradingeconomics.com/romania/minimum-wages
3 Legea 247/2018
4 https://www.euronews.com/2020/02/03/romanian-bakery-embroiled-in-racism-scandal-over-sri-
lankan-workers
5 https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/social/ministrul-intotero-anunta-noi-date-oficiale-97-milioane-
de-romani-traiesc-in-strainatate-1163989