The arrival of Albanian workers in Malta has increased tenfold over the last five years while the number of work visas issued for Filipinos this year is 10 times lower than in 2017, according to government data.
The figures indicate a shift in trends, although Albanians remain a fraction of the foreign working population.
The data was provided to Times of Malta in follow-up questions to figures presented in parliament showing that Malta’s high commission in New Delhi, India, had issued 13,140 travel visas in just 13 months – from September 2021 to September 2022.
The Foreign Affairs Ministry subsequently told Times of Malta that 10,958 of these were work visas for Indian, Nepali, Sri Lanka and Bangladeshi nationals.
A spokesperson added that the acceptance rate of work visa applications stood at 63 per cent.
As of October, Bangladeshi nationals have started applying for a work visa in their home country.
Over recent weeks, Times of Malta has reported that third-country nationals are resorting to paying recruitment agencies thousands of euros to find employment in Malta for a permit that costs just €280.50.
Expat community leaders and businesspeople said they noticed the increase in the number of people resorting to such agencies coincided with reported “inhumane” delays for ‘regular’ applications at Identity Malta.
These concerns follow a recent drive by the government to import foreign workers.
Five years ago, current finance minister Clyde Caruana, then head of JobsPlus, had said that the island needed thousands more foreign workers to keep the economy running.
By the following year, in the summer of 2018, there were nearly 43,000 foreign workers here and the cabinet had approved plans to bring in thousands more from non-EU countries.
The government’s policy to import foreign nationals to make up for gaps in the local labour supply saw the number of foreign workers in Malta shoot up from 9,500 in 2009 to 77,825 in 2021.
Around 43,500 of these 77,825 workers were third-country nationals, according to JobsPlus.
Topping the list of non-EU nationals were 6,376 Filipinos and 6,047 Indians.
Ten years earlier, in 2011, there were just 490 people from the Philippines and 234 from India in employment in Malta.
In 2021, a total of 3,984 were from Serbia, while the number of Albanians in employment stood at 2,190.
Ten years earlier, the number of Serbian workers was 381 and there were only 38 Albanian workers in Malta back then.
Three other nationalities that also topped the list were Nepalese, Turkish and Pakistani with 2,732, 1,688 and 1,313 workers respectively.
In 2011, there were only three Nepali workers in Malta.
Separate data provided by the Home Affairs Ministry, meanwhile, shows that the rush to import Filipino and Serbian workers has eased in recent years, with an increase in Albanians instead.
While 2,721 Filipino and 2,824 Serbian nationals were issued a work visa back in 2017, the corresponding totals for this year – up until October 7 – were 211 and 374, respectively.
The same data shows that while 154 Albanian nationals were issued a work visa in 2017, there were 1,291 new Albanian workers between January 1 and October 7.
Working out the average over 12 months, the figures show a tenfold increase among new Albanians and a tenfold downward trend for Filipino workers.
This same data for work visas provided by the government also reflects the Labour administration’s increased efforts to import foreign workers in 2018, with the number of work visas for Serbian, Filipino, Indian and Nepali nationals increasing substantially in 12 months.