The team of journalists has investigated how an incoherent migration system is creating undocumented migration and fuelling modern slavery across the continent. They have focused on the annual quotas of migrant workers invited by the Romanian government to fill labour shortages, who are then pushed into illegality soon after arrival.
Some of these workers later seek asylum in countries such as Italy, relying on a system that is overwhelmed and allows them to work legally for up to four years while their applications are processed. Others choose to remain undocumented in Romania, living in perpetual fear of deportation while the country attempts to demonstrate its readiness to join the Schengen Area.
Dozens of Asian workers, NGOs, lawyers, jurists, human trafficking experts, recruitment agencies and immigration officials have been interviewed by journalists. They have also requested statistical data from national institutions in order to gain a better understanding of the scale of the phenomenon.
Some of the individuals under investigation have previously been implicated in scandals involving forged documents, yet were surprisingly spared punishment. This has led the team to suspect that they may have political connections, which could pose a legal risk to the investigation. However, the team has worked closely with lawyers and jurists to double-check all the reporting.
Key Findings:
- Many people enter Europe with a work visa for one state, but then move to another, falling into irregularity and becoming vulnerable to exploitation.
- In the countries of origin of economic migrants, there is a thriving visa market that exploits those leaving, with prices varying according to destination and how easily the laws can be circumvented.
- Romanian recruitment agencies and employers exploit lax legislation and weak enforcement to push migrants into irregularity by taking control of their paperwork. In doing so, they not only charge recruitment fees, but also evade salary taxes.
- The Romanian government focuses excessively on deporting those found to be residing illegally, making little to no effort to investigate the circumstances that brought them to this situation. Many such cases could easily fall under the definition of human trafficking.
- The stricter controls introduced by the Italian government in the immigration decree for people coming from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have not stopped the scams that continue to occur at every level, nor have they stopped migration from these countries via Eastern Europe or Libya.
- Companies are often complicit in fraud, including large European companies operating in Romania that exploit migrants' vulnerability, as defined by the laws governing their entry, to take advantage of them.
On the right: Photo by Filippo Poltronieri and Sebastian Viskanic
