POPULATION-ARGENTINA: Rising Xenophobia Against Rumanian Families

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 3 2000 (IPS) - Some 7,000 people have come to Argentina since the government launched a programme to attract immigrants from eastern Europe in the mid-1990s.

But the reputation of all of the immigrants has been hurt by a small group of families from Rumania, apparently Romas (gypsies), whose constant panhandling and lifestyle are grating on local residents in Buenos Aires.

“There is a flow of highly-skilled immigrants coming to Argentina in search of jobs,” Viorel Ipate, Rumanian consul in Buenos Aires, told IPS. “But this group that has come in with tourist visas is hurting the image of the immigrant, and for that reason the Rumanian Embassy is not happy with them.”

The main activity of the roughly 100 families is panhandling, for which they claim to be refugees from Kosovo, said Ipate. The children are also put out on the streets to beg. The families live in cheap rundown hotels in downtown Buenos Aires, or tents set up on rooftop terraces.

Vasile Gheorghiu, president of the Federation of Rumanian Residents in Argentina, told IPS that the problem began when thousands of Romas emigrated from Rumania in the 1990s to countries like Austria, Spain, Italy and, chiefly, Germany.

But apparently some families outstayed their welcome, and according to Gheorghiu, Germany is now providing them with round- trip tickets to South America.

Many have come into Argentina from Uruguay, Brazil or Paraguay, while “some 350 arrived on Lufhtansa or Swissair flights,” said Gheorghiu.

When the airlines telephoned the families because they failed to show up for their return flights, they said they wanted to stay, and began to apply for tourist visas every 60 or 90 days in immigration offices. Authorities have extended the visas while investigating whether the families are in fact refugees, he explained.

“I don’t know if in immigration they feel sorry for them because they have many children, or if they have found a way to renew their papers through some other route,” commented Gheorghiu – an allusion to the possibility that the Rumanians were greasing the palms of immigration officials.

But with the failure of the police and immigration to do anything about the situation, xenophobia has grown among local residents. And the hostility towards the families in question has begun to affect attitudes regarding foreigners in general.

“They’re a plague, they’re everywhere, they’re dirty, ugly, they pee in the streets. They really brought the worst from abroad to live among us,” complained María Cristina Salerno, a resident of the Constitución neighbourhood near downtown Buenos Aires, who said she was unable to sell her property because of the Rumanian families.

“Now they’re Rumanians, but at other times they’re Peruvian thieves, Bolivians, or Korean exploiters. They don’t come to work like my grandparents did, but to live at our expense,” said Salerno, a descendant of European immigrants like many of her fellow Argentines.

In the past decade, a large number of nationals from neighbouring countries have come over the border in search of work. Another flow of immigrants has come from Asia.

But the immigrants have come up against heavy resistance in Argentina, where the unemployment rate currently stands at 14 percent. The construction workers union even carried out a publicity campaign against Bolivians and Paraguayans who, it claimed, accepted work at lower wages.

But the director of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM), Argentine national Lelio Mármora, said it was not really a question of competing for the same jobs, because “immigrants tend to take the jobs locals refuse.”

Mármora said that when Europe began slapping controls on immigration, immigrants, traditionally seen as an element of progress and development, began to be seen as “a threat, competition.”

Immigrants tend to be blamed for all social woes – high unemployment, rise in crime – and they tend to be seen as more numerous than they actually are, said the director of the IOM. “Politicians speak of ‘migration waves’. But that is a lie, because there are far less immigrants than there were at the start of the 20th century.”

That perception – which to some extent is common around the world today, with minor variations – has taken hold in the Buenos Aires neighourhoods where the Rumanian families who arrived with aid from the German government are living.

Local residents recently took to the streets in protest, waving placards reading “Out Rumanians!” One of the protesters commented that “they are always partying or fighting, they have so many kids, who are always getting into trouble.”

But with respect to complaints that they exploit their children and live in overcrowded conditions – the situation depicted does not differ much from that of many low-income or unemployed Argentines.

Whatever the case, the Rumanian families rubbing against the grain in Argentina are not actually immigrants, but a sort of “permanent tourist.”

“They say they came in boats, but that’s not true. We know they arrived in airplanes, with their entire family – another phenomenon unusual among immigrants, who tend to arrive one by one,” said Ipate.

The director of the Migrations Unit of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, Enrique García Pinto, said the aim of the programme of cooperation with eastern Europe implemented in 1995 was that immigrants coming from those countries would not need work contracts to stay for a year in Argentina.

“They came from the Ukraine, from Russia, and only around 100 Rumanians applied for entry visas, which does not mean they actually came and stayed,” said García Pinto.

“The police are lazy, they should act in these cases,” said the official, who added that the group of Rumanian families was hurting the integration process of real immigrants.

Immigrants from eastern Europe are generally professionals or skilled workers, and usually find jobs for which they are overqualified. For example, there are doctors working as nurses and mechanical engineers working in garages repairing cars.

The same thing occurs with immigrants from other Latin American countries, with nurses or teachers working as domestics.

The average age of the eastern European immigrants who came to Argentina in recent years is 38, and most of them have arrived on their own. Later, if they find jobs, they are allowed to bring their families. But that is not easy, because they often just scrape by on the wages they earn.

“Many leave because they don’t find what they were hoping for, and they spend all the money they brought in just a few months,” said Gheorghiu, who came to Argentina in 1952.

If the Rumanians who dedicate their time to panhandling run into obstacles in Argentina, they’ll move on, said Ipate. “If the justice system cracks down on them because they exploit their children, perhaps they’ll prefer to go to another country, because they don’t want problems.”