Employers begin to relish migrants

A month ago Russia was recognized as the most desirable country for refugees, due to the inflow of Ukrainian citizens. According to the UN Refugee Agency, Russia takes the first place in number of welcomed refugees in 2014. The country received 274,700 officially registered requests on issuing refugee status or temporary asylum. 271,200 requests, i.e. 99% of them, were sent to the Russian government by Ukrainian citizens. The report states that in previous years the number of requests for asylum has never exceeded 5000.

On August 1st the Russian FMS will maintain preferences for staying in Russia by Ukrainian citizens only for forcedly displaced persons from the southeast of the country. All other Ukrainians should either get an official job license or define their legal status in the RF by other means, according to the head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) of Russia, Konstantin Romodanovsky.

He said that 10.6 million people entered the Russian Federation in 2015. That is 5.5% less than in 2014. 9.4 million people left the Russian Federation. That is 6.5% more than last year. “If we compare these two percentages, we find that the delta is about 12%. If we take away 11 million it is 11%, so it turns out that there are a million migrants fewer in the Russian Federation in comparison with last year. This is the result of the work of our regulator,” Romodanovsky said. He urges not to mix up the flow that enters with the number of people who are on the territory of Russia now.

“If we speak about those who are on the territory of Russia, then the leader is Uzbekistan, 21%, or 2 million 145 thousand 260 people.

Ukraine, not counting the one million refugees from the south-eastern areas of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, is 1 million 1 thousand 706 people.

Tajikistan is 992 thousand 170 people, it is 9.8%.

Then Kazakhstan on 7%,

Azerbaijan on 5.4%,

China on 2.7%,

Germany on about 2%,

the USA 1.1%,

the UK 0.8%.”

This year, more than 1 million patents have been issued. “If we speak about the total number of permits this and the previous year, then the results are inferior to last year's figure of 30%. The process of registration of patents has just started, it has been operating just six months. For example, I expect that the maximum economic benefit from this approach will be after 1.5 or 2 years. It is based on the experience of the introduction of patents for individuals, whether we want it or not. This is the required ‘acceleration’... The economic effect of the imposition of economic patents is noticeable. About 13.5 billion rubles will be in the budget due to the fixed advance payments. This is almost 50% more than last year. By the way, from the start of the mechanism of patents, the budget of the Russian Federation received more than 50 billion 500 million rubles,” the FMS head said.

Romodanovsky notes the changing situation, as the number of terminations of employment contracts by employers of foreign national workers fell 20%: “This means that we have fewer low-skilled workers. And employers realize that foreign workers became more expensive due to patents. However, they have come to value and use what they have.”