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”.