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Migrants face legal and practical obstacles, as well as a lack of institutional support for accessing the Romanian labour market

Press Release

The Research and Information Center on Immigrant Integration (CDCDI) within the Romanian Association for Health Promotion published the research report "The Impact of Immigration upon the Romanian Labour Market”, a study on migrants' access to the labour market, as employers and entrepreneurs.

The research includes a review of immigration policy implementation with an impact upon the labour market between 2007-2015. The data source consists of the legal, strategic and operational framework regulating the access of various migrant categories to employment and to entrepreneurial initiatives, the official data provided by various institutions (ITM, ANOFM, AMOFM, AJOFM, Universities, IGI and others) based on the law on access to public information, as well as interviews with representatives of public institutions and non-governmental organisations and, last but not least, interviews with migrants in Romania. The study refers to foreign citizens with a legal stay on Romania's territory, who originate from outside the European Union, the Economic European Area and the Swiss Confederation.

The number of immigrants in Romania is very low, about 0.3% of the general population. Considering that only some of them are employed (less than 10% of the total working age immigrant population), aliens are not visible on the labour market, and authorities do not find it necessary to adapt legislation and practices to their needs.
Most migrants came to Romania for family reunification. Studies rank second and remunerated activities rank third among the migrants' reasons to stay in Romania. The number of aliens staying for remunerated activities has seen by far the most dramatic drop after the peak year 2008, so today the share of those coming to Romania for this purpose is less than 10% of the total number of immigrants.

The CDCDI study shows, among others, that:

One of the declared objectives of immigration policies is to facilitate access and legal stay in Romania for third country nationals who meet employment demands. Currently neither AJOFM, nor other public institutions hold any certain data on employment demands on the Romanian market.
The employment permit procedure blocks the direct labour market access of those aliens who wish to enter/ to stay in the country for work purposes but do not meet the estimated domestic employment demands.
The aliens' employment procedure is open only for those employers who failed to occupy their vacancies from domestic sources - with Romanian citizens or foreign citizens with a long-term right to stay, EU or EEA. The file for obtaining the employment permit has to include a certificate issued by the County Employment Agencies and possibly also the proof of announcing the vacancy in a widely circulated daily newspaper.
The recognition of study diplomas may also be required in order to continue studies in Romania and to obtain the employment permit, depending on job and profession. For study diplomas obtained in third countries the diploma recognition procedure is very burdensome, expensive and arbitrary, particularly if the systems are not similar to the Romanian one or if there are no bilateral agreements in place for diploma recognition between Romania and the issuing state.
Entrepreneurs who want to obtain the long-term visa for commercial activities have to comply with the ever stricter requirements on investments and business plan. According to the procedures for granting the specialised technical approval, foreign investors have to present now an extremely detailed business plan, and compliance with this plan is subject to annual monitoring by the territorial offices for small and medium sized enterprises.
Employment agencies have no special programmes for immigrants, as according to ANOFM strategy, migrants are not among vulnerable groups on the labour market. They are treated like any Romanian citizen looking for a job. AJOFM staff admit that aliens have higher difficulties integrating on the labour market, because of the different language and culture.
NGOs believe that legislation is not correlated to the realities on the labour market and in related fields (the shortage of medical doctors, bureaucratic and non-functional systems for the recognition of studies and qualifications etc.), to the particular conditions of immigrants (lack of documents or study diplomas, qualification in other professions than those demanded on the market or the impossibility to prove qualifications), nor to the inherent difficulties of adapting to a new country (language, culture).
The interviews with foreign citizens reveal that the difficulties they faced in integrating on the Romanian labour market are mainly related to language barriers, which are a significant obstacle to obtaining information, cultural differences, authorities' lack of knowledge on immigrants' rights, breaches of work conditions by employers and discrimination. In addition the extremely long and burdensome procedure for the recognition of studies completed in third countries and the blocked access to practising certain liberal professions have also been mentioned.
The interviewed immigrants who have businesses in Romania or who envisage an entrepreneurial activity mentioned obstacles related to funding/credits, difficulties in understanding legislation, bureaucracy or the fear of being expelled. The fear of abusive, discriminating practices has been identified - the fear of more frequent controls than in the case of Romanian businesses.
The report also includes a number of recommendations addressed to public authorities, in order to correlate the objectives undertaken by legislation and governmental documents with institutional practices in relation with immigrants in Romania.

Download the full report: ENGLISH_EMINET_Rap_immigration_labour_market.pdf

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