I had to laugh when the Unsleeping Eye brought me this little ad from a country 10,000 kilometers away from Moldova:

But the more I looked at it, the sadder I got, especially when reading “peaceful environment.” There are a lot of really terrible places to live in this world, and that includes the bigger cities in Pakistan like Lahore:

In case you’re reading this and thinking that Moldova is about to be overrun by scheming Pakistanis with “no education,” I can assure you that this is not even close to being the case. I’ve met or heard tell of just about every foreigner in the capital, and people from India (roughly 50) outweigh those from Pakistan (a grand total of 1 person).

By far, the largest number of foreigners in RM is people from Ukraine, most of whom are here either to study or because they have family members here. Even in terms of refugees, the largest numbers are also from Ukraine, with more than 500 people here in RM from that country. Not quite sure what qualifies someone to be a refugee from Ukraine, though. Fleeing from the fighting in Donetsk? Fleeing political persecution in some way? Hard to tell.

According to this article posted today, there are 25,000 foreigners legally residing in RM, and the greatest numbers are from Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Israel, and Turkey.

Some of those from Israel are former Moldovans who left during the days of the Soviet Union like Ilan Shor and others are here to sell detergents and cleaning chemicals. I have no idea why, but half the chemicals sold in the grocery store here come from Israel.

Turkey, meanwhile, is a huge trading partner with RM, and half the stuff in the central market comes from Turkey. Surprisingly, Turkey only had a business consulate here for years, but recently opened a full-fledged embassy.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has no diplomatic presence in RM, so any desperate people coming here because of that ad are going to feel mighty lonely indeed.

Note: Immigrating to RM is a hell of a lot more complicated than this ad suggests.