Migrants go to Europe for benefits, to Russia – for jobs

European countries should unite and provide a united policy in the migration sphere, President of France Francois Hollande stated after a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“Responsibility for the situation cannot be laid on one country only; this is our common Eruopean problem… This is an exclusive situation for the whole of Europe; and we must unite and provide a united policy, facing it,” Hollande said. According to him, France and Germany support the idea of establishing registration centers in Greece and Italy. They will define whether the people who come there have grounds for being granted asylum or they simply want to migrate to Europe.

Meanwhile, Yuri Moskovsky, the executive secretary of the Public Advisory Council at the Federal Migration Service, Project Director of the Development Fund of International Relations Neighborhood, thinks that those who go to European countries intend to receive benefits, considering that Europe is a paradise; but the majority of those who go to Russia realize that they have to work hard here, there are difficult conditions and it is necessary to pay for a patent today, for health insurance, etc. “No freebies. Frankly speaking, Russian citizens also know about it. How long have we received free apartments? There is a category of people who receive them: servicemen, civil servants, as well a number of other categories. But the majority cannot receive them. The same things apply to migrants. Being a migrant it is impossible to receive an apartment, as one can in England,” Moskovsky said.

According to him, in the past, migrants came to Europe for benefits; and now the situation has changed. “The policy, which was pursued by some special western services, has led to war and carnage. Syria, Libya and other countries. People are saving themselves from war.”

Russia faced it in the form that the actions of some foreign services in Ukraine led to a catastrophic situation. “The flow of refugees from Ukraine started in 1992. People escaped not only the economic reality. A lot of people ran away from the atmosphere created in Ukraine by the Ukrainian authorities during almost a quarter of a century,” Moskovsky stated.

Moreover, the expert says that people are migrating to Russia from a former country which had a single cultural space. “Sometimes people from villages speak Russian much better than graduates of our universities, they know the Russian that they were taught for 15 years. There are some shortcomings, but the level of knowledge of the Russian language is sufficiently high.”

Moskovsky thinks that, despite all shortcomings of its work, the Russian political machinery was better prepared regarding migration issues and the internal security of the state and the people than the political machinery outside the country, in the West.