A smart state is able to control migration processes

By Vestnik Kavkaza

Yesterday President Putin stated that the Federal Migration Service of Russia can use “smart cameras” and mobile applications which enable to identify foreign citizens who come to the Russian territory.

Simultaneously, Vsevolod Chaplin, archpriest, the head of the Synodal Department for relations between the church and society, proposed more “humane” methods of structuring of migration processes: “The process, which is associated with the presence of people of different cultures, different lifestyles, people living by different rules in big cities, is not an inevitable disaster. A smart state, a smart city is able to always control such processes. In the Soviet era as well as in the time of the Russian Empire, different national cultures, different lifestyles, different social rules, in particular those related to Muslims, were obviously present. But there were still attempts to introduce certain limitations to it being uncontrolled in the Soviet Union as well as in the Russian Empire. Issues related to the labor market and presence of migrants and internally-displaced persons on this market are solvable. We are well aware of that from the examples of some countries.”

Chaplin cite Switzerland as an example: “A person who does not have guaranteed, decent, appropriate housing in any of the Swiss cities will never get to work there. If an entrepreneur wants to hire a person, the entrepreneur or any international organization, which are in multitude in Geneva, for example are obliged to provide him with a decent salary which would allow him to rent a house or provide housing. Generally, it should always be more profitable for the employer to hire locals, than hire a migrant worker, since he has to pay more in case he hires a migrant worker.”

Russia is still very far from this arrangement, but Chaplin is sure that this situation can be managed: “On the one hand, one can save the people coming here from slave labor and often, sorry to say, inappropriate human living conditions. One can save Russian cities from shady trading, black market money, poor quality products, dubious services and defective building materials. In order to do this, one simply needs to clearly limit the shady and often, to be frank, criminal economy, regardless of any ethnic factor.”

Chaplin was pleased that President of the Russian Federation took the prize of the World Russian People's Council for maintaining a sovereign Russia - this was the exact wording with which the Bureau of the Presidium of the WRPC and later the plenary session of the 17th WRPC approved, awarding the first prize of the WRPC to the President of Russia. “Russia during several periods of its history, in the XVII century, as well as at the end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries, on which the Day of National Unity is based, at the beginning of the XX century and in the 1990s experienced periods during which it could have stopped being Russia and, at least, could have stopped being a sovereign Russia. The fact that this did not happen, that the country remains itself, follows its own path, continues to play a leading role in the world, is the achievement of our people, above all, but it is also to the merit of those state leaders who were able to hear the soul of the nation, not to break it over their knee, but to channel what the people want from their present and their future. Certainly, it was with that in mind that the members of the Bureau of the World Russian People's Council submitted to the Patriarch the wording with which the award and its insignia were given yesterday. The award was presented for maintaining a sovereign Russia to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” Chaplin said.

He noted that “in addition to the official events there were other activities, during some of which radical slogans could be heard, we know that people marched with different intentions, professing different ideas. Some associated their public events and gatherings with faith, some with one or other political idea, with party affiliation. But I am glad at least that during the majority of these unofficial events the law was not violated, with some exceptions. We know that there were attempts to use extremist materials, but nevertheless there was no violence, there were no ethnic or other conflicts, clashes along political lines. People expressed their positions peacefully. I hope that it will always be like that.”