Up to a million Romanians have come to the UK to work as cleaners and builders, and now almost 40,000 leave every year due to crime, a crumbling NHS and the high cost of living. This is reported by the Daily Mail newspaper.
“Looking at another gloomy rainy day and realizing that the cost of living had skyrocketed again, Alexandra Stamate realized that her family’s future was not in the UK. It was difficult to make ends meet in Bristol every month, so she and her husband, an Uber driver, decided to leave with their three children. The couple, who emigrated to the UK in search of a better life, eventually joined the growing stream of Romanian compatriots who have returned to their homeland in recent years. Five years later, they live in their own small farm in an idyllic part of Romania, where they grow their own food and are mostly self—sufficient,” the publication says.
It is noted that this rural idyll would not be possible in Britain, because there are high land prices and their own farm would be something beyond them.
About 4 million Romanians left the country after the collapse of the social system, including to the UK, and now many are returning. This is facilitated by a booming economy with an average salary growth of more than 700% over the past ten years, low unemployment, cheap housing and a relatively lower crime rate.
“This trend is reflected in the UK: 37,000 Romanians left Britain in the year to June 2024, while only 14,000 arrived, according to the Office for National Statistics.… The number of Romanians leaving the UK is higher than among any EU country, significantly exceeding the 25,000 Poles who left Britain and returned to their homeland with low taxes during the year up to last June,” the newspaper writes.
According to social media, Romanians complain, among other things, about the high crime rate in the UK, the spread of drugs, the rising cost of living and the growing discrimination based on nationality after Brexit. They are ready to join the stream of their compatriots who have already left the country, and the improvement of economic conditions in Romania tips the scales in favor of returning.
“The fall in the value of the pound also causes their discontent, as many have less money to send back to Romania to buy their own property or take care of elderly relatives. The Bucharest government has been urging its citizens to return for years, having lost about a quarter of the population to emigration since Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown and executed along with his wife on Christmas Day 1989. In 2019, an advertising campaign was launched aimed at returning workers, with grants and loans…” the newspaper notes.
According to the global Numbeo platform, which evaluates the perception of citizens of different countries, Romania is perceived as a safer country with a lower crime rate than the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Norway and Hungary, although there are concerns about bribery and corruption.
According to the 2011 census, the number of people born in Romania in the UK rose to 83,168 from 7,631 a decade earlier, and the 2021 census recorded 557,554 people. Thus, Romanians are the fourth largest group of immigrants after representatives of Pakistan, Poland and India. According to the newspaper’s sources, the exact number of Romanians in the UK is currently not disclosed in official statistics, although the UK’s Joint Housing Evidence Center reported in a 2023 report that their number, according to various sources, ranged from 342,000 to more than a million.
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