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Romania Emigration: Problem or Solution?
Although the goal of the Ceausescu regime was national
homogenization and an ethnically pure Romania, the regime
opposed
the emigration of ethnic minorities. Beginning in the late
1970s,
a media campaign was launched that followed two basic
tacks.
Spokespersons for ethnic minorities in the workers'
councils
praised the regime's treatment of minorities and declared
their
devotion to socialist Romania. By contrast, those who
desired to
emigrate were depicted as weaklings with underdeveloped
"patriotic
and political consciousness," would-be traitors abandoning
their
fatherland and the struggle to build socialism. Stories
abounded of
Romanians emigrating only to find life more difficult in
their new
environment and happily returning to their homeland.
Accounts of
those who had emigrated to West Germany were particularly
bleak.
Attempts to discourage emigration were not left
entirely to the
media. The official policy allowed emigration only on an
individual
basis, and only in specific cases--usually for family
reunification. In later years, the PCR ironically
suggested that
families could be reunited by immigration into Romania.
Obtaining
permission to leave the country was a lengthy, expensive,
and
exhausting process. Prospective emigrants were likely to
be fired
from their jobs or demoted to positions of lower prestige
and pay.
They were often evicted from their homes and publicly
castigated.
At the same time, they were denied medical care and other
social
benefits, and their children were not permitted to enroll
in
schools.
In 1972, amid claims that emigration was purposefully
encouraged by the West and was becoming a "brain drain"
for the
nation, the regime proposed a heavy tax requiring would-be
emigrants to reimburse the state for the cost of their
education.
Although Romanian citizens could not legally possess
foreign money,
sums of up to $US20,000 in hard currency were to be paid
before
emigrants would be allowed to leave. Under pressure from
the United
States, which threatened to revoke Romania's
most-favored-nation
trade status, and West Germany and Israel, the tax
officially was
not imposed. But money was collected in the form of
bribes, with
government officials reportedly demanding thousands of
dollars
before granting permission to emigrate. A failed attempt
to
emigrate illegally was punishable by up to three years in
jail.
Despite Ceausescu's opposition to emigration, the
ethnic German
population declined sharply. In 1967, when diplomatic
relations
with West Germany were established, roughly 60,000 ethnic
Germans
requested permission to emigrate. By 1978, some 80,000 had
departed
for West Germany. In 1978 the two countries negotiated an
agreement
concerning the remaining German population, which had
decreased
from 2 percent of the total population in 1966 to 1.6
percent in
1977. Romania agreed to allow 11,000 to 13,000 ethnic
Germans to
emigrate each year in return for hard currency and a
payment of
DM5,000 per person to reimburse the state for educational
expenses.
In 1982 that figure rose to DM7,000-8,000 per person. In
the decade
between 1978 and 1988, approximately 120,000 Germans
emigrated,
leaving behind a population of only about 200,000, between
80 and
90 percent of whom wanted to emigrate. As their numbers
declined,
the Germans feared they would be less able to resist
assimilation.
In 1987 an entire village of some 200 ethnic Germans
applied en
masse for emigration permits.
The Jewish minority also markedly declined as a result
of
large-scale emigration. Suffering under state-fostered
antiSemitism and financially ruined by expropriations during
nationalization, much of the Jewish population applied for
permission to leave in 1948. Between 1948 and 1951,
117,950 Jews
emigrated to Israel, and from 1958 to 1964, 90,000 more
followed,
leaving a total Jewish population of only 43,000 in 1966.
Permission to emigrate was freely granted to Jews, and by
1988 the
population numbered between 20,000 and 25,000, half of
whom were
more than sixty-five years of age. Furthermore, over
one-third of
those Jews still in the country held exit visas.
In the late 1980s, ethnic Hungarians clung to their
ancient
roots in Transylvania and, unlike the Germans and Jews,
the
majority were reluctant to consider emigration. Although
neither
Hungary nor Romania wanted the minority decreased by
emigration,
thousands of refugees crossed into Hungary during the
1980s,
especially after 1986. This development prompted Budapest
to launch
an unprecedented all-out publicity campaign against
Romania's
treatment of minorities. Inside Romania, ethnic protest
against the
regime was quite restrained. A notable exception in the
late 1980s
was Karoly Kiraly, an important leader in the Hungarian
community
who openly denounced the regime's nationalities policy as
assimilationist. The regime, which readily discounted such
protests, labeled Kiraly "a dangerously unstable relic of
Stalinism
dressed up in Romanian national garb."
Data as of July 1989
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