By Vestnik Kavkaza
A protest against illegal migration was held on Sunday in the Moscow region town of Losino-Petrovsky. No incidents were registered. According to the mass media, there are 23,000 residents in the town, and about 9,000 people are migrants. The number of migrants is growing due to illegal migrants, and it leads to conflicts and dissatisfaction of the local population.
Meanwhile, Gadzhimet Safaraliev chairman of the Duma Committee on Nationalities thinks that “80% of our country is very sparsely populated, and we do not have enough, unfortunately, we do not have human resources for development of Siberia and the Far East. We are in need of migrants who know the language, and the history of the region, the mentality of the peoples, in order to integrate into this society more easily. Here we have to work with countries from which migrants come, and also set up centers of adaptation here, where they can learn the Russian language. There are also different types of migration. There is temporary, seasonal migration. Maybe in this case there is no need to deeply learn the language and customs of a country. But when you come for one, two or three years or even want naturalize, then, of course, you have to know everything well, in order to be a full member of society.
Migration should be focused. It should necessarily have a focus on those areas where labor resources are needed, and on what human resources are needed. The black market, farmers or for that matter any other sector of the economy of our country, because migration still largely needs to address economic issues. In the future, time will show us how communities are going to change, because this is not a simple process, since migration creates and changes ethnographic compositions and societies in different regions. This can also lead to some positive as well as negative results. In addition, I would like to say that we should also use along with migration one internal issue. An issue related to our population. We have in some parts an overpopulation and a lack of people in others. The mobility of people, unfortunately, is not high. If we resettle our own citizens in our country, it will also influence in a certain way those economic areas, those regions which are needed by the country, which are essential to its further development.
Siberia, the Far East are very sparsely populated and at the same time there is an outflow of population. Why? It means that we do not offer conditions for people to settle in. People are ready to move to any part of the country under certain conditions: affordable housing and normal work. It means that there is no question of desire or attachment. And resettlement issues must also be addressed not by transporting whole enclaves, but by resettling on demand, based on the economic requirements of a region.”
Rushan hazrat Abbyasov, deputy chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, agreed with Safaraliev: “Today the state needs firstly, perhaps purposefully to direct the flow of migrants. When specialized workers who know their profession and are willing to serve and work in different structures come with a purpose, naturally certainly there will be some order. To date, in the media we definitely see that immigrants are discussed only from a negative point of view. Every day we are seeing pictures from TV, when in special jackets the FMS come to raid basements, construction sites and in other circumstances, totally unadapted migrants are found, in unlivable, inhuman conditions. Above all, migrants are people. The people who provide them with employment should take care of this.
During the celebration of our two great feasts of Islam you see in pictures many believers, of course, there is a considerable number of local population there, who just came to attend holiday services, but there is also a large number of faithful workers. Basically, they have today all the same rights as we do, the right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, as the constitution clearly spells out. When the question of the lack of mosques in Moscow is raised, we are always told: Do you want to build them for migrants? Migrants, in principle, should also have a place to pray, and this is normal. But, of course, first of all for the local population, which today needs Orthodox churches as well as mosques. Today, we are conducting educational work in a lot of mosques. In our Sunday schools and madrasas, we are working on it and have been teaching Russian to immigrants so that they can integrate into society.”
