Guest worker Marko from Vienna: No work, crime, scheming scumbags would sell own mother for 10 euros

Fake passports, loans, scams, lies, and promises. Expensive rooms, blackmail and fraud, gambling and crime, then detention, interrogation, deportation...

Gone are the "happy" times when gastarbeiters (guest workers) would return from Austria, Germany and Switzerland with their wallets full, building homes and boasting rented limousines. Now everyone wants to go abroad at any cost, on crowded buses and low-cost planes, counting the stamps in their passports and looking for a way to stay where they intend to be - even with fake papers, without insurance and or any kind of rights, always in fear of inspectors and police.

After a girl who "fell" in Vienna using a fake Slovenian ID card contacted us - other stories revealing not in the least fairy tale lifestyle of our people working abroad started to arrive. In these stories people denounced their own compatriots who, as they say, can only make things worse if you ask them for help.

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Our reader Marko told us what Vienna, where Serbs can be found in almost every street, looks like today. Marko has been in this city for two decades.

Up against Syrians, Afghans, Chechens... and other migrants in the black labor market, forged passports, loans, scams, lies and promises. Expensive rooms, blackmail and fraud, gambling and crime, then deportation, detention, interrogation. This is what the world of newcomers to the EU, who come without papers ,looks like in "the promised Vienna" of today.

"It's become normal here to deceive a man, moreover, people brag about it. I can't believe there are such scammers and such scum, they would defraud their own mother for 10 euros. The city of Vienna is no longer safe for life, there are very few people who are normal and honest, I don't really know where all of this is going," Marko, an "old-school" gastarbeiter, complained to us.

He says it all started going downhill when (EU) visas were abolished.

"At first I was glad because my friends and relatives could come and visit, but soon I saw that things were going in the wrong direction. 'Millions' of people came here, they'll do anything to get a (work) visa, they take Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian passports, ID cards that are mostly suspicious, crime is on the rise - when they can't find a job then it's, 'let's steal, or whatever'. They get bans, then our people are deported, then they go home, change their last and first name and then come back here again," says Marko.

And when you are disenfranchised, you consent to everything, even blackmail, in the hope of achieving something.

"Rent prices have gone up sharply, rooms are let for 300-350 euros, but they look like dumps, commissions are charged and as many as three rents must be paid in advance and that money is never seen again... It's very hard to get a job because our new gastarbeiters don't have work permits, a business owner will sooner hire Bulgarians, Romanians or Hungarians because they are legals," Marko added.

(Mateja Beljan - m.beljan@telegraf.rs)