This paper investigates the motivations behind the trip duration in the destination country for Moldovan migrants. The New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) asserts that preference for the home country; wage differential and migration costs drive the choice of the timing of return. Within this framework, we focus on the influence of the legal status of migrants (as part of the migration costs) and on the potential push or pull effects of the characteristics of the migrant's region of origin (influencing the choice of the migrant both in terms of wage differential and preference for the origin country). The central proposition is that undocumented migrants face higher migration costs than legal migrants and therefore have an incentive to stay in destination countries longer than migrants with documents in order to increase the amount of savings relative to the costs of entry on a given trip. To test this hypothesis we run a duration model using a national household dataset on migration in the Republic of Moldova collected in 2006 complemented with a regional dataset from Roscovan and Galer (2006). Evidence from parametric survival models supports our proposition and therefore recommends enforcing international laws as regards to the free movement of labor. In addition, the social regional development of the departure zone acts as a pull factor, claiming for more public development aid.