Yeugeny Nikolaichuk. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
The number of Russian citizens who think that migrants increase the criminal level and who propose reduction of their amount is growing year by year. Sociologists found out that 71% of the citizens connect the growth of criminal tension with labor migrants. 17 years ago 54% of Russian citizens thought so; 9 years ago - 59%.
The majority of the Russian citizens - 73% - stand for using strict measures by the authorities toward migrants. However, the government has its own view. Last Tuesday the prime minister Dmitry Medvedev adopted the state program for 7 years "Encouraging Citizens' Employment." It says about the coming increase of a migrant inflow. The program costs 635 billion rubles, 569 billion will be taken from the state budget. For this sum the Ministry of Financials is ready to frozen the situation with unemployment, and the existing demand at the labor market will be satisfied by coming migrants. The Ministry of Labor wants to support the employable population, which reduces by 1 million annually, by attraction of migrants.
Nevertheless, such a decision is reasonable. The Russian nation is many various ethnic groups in one country. Why isn't it a good idea to compensate the lack of working hands in the central part of Russia by migrants from the North Caucasus where employable population cannot find job? The question is posed by the authors of the Ethnic Policy Strategy which should be presented to President on December 1 in a complete variant. It also states that ethnic conflicts appear because of corruption and social inequality, the lack of working places, social vulnerability, and an insufficient role of culture in raising patriots.
The head of the working group on development of the Strategy, Vyacheslav Mikhailov, says that the group includes many representatives of the North Caucasus. The main point of the document is an idea of a consolidated political nation, a civic, but not an ethnic one. Of course, there are threats that republics can be oppressed under this flag. In the situation of internal and external migration, mutual respect is necessary. There should be no clashes and fights, and this is about upbringing.
Cultural policy is a central line of the document. Any expressions of extremism and nationalism are a result of social factors, problems of socio-economic and politics. Their disadvantages are tried to be hidden behind the ethnic issue. If the social difference between the center and periphery is not eliminated, conflicts will continue. The split becomes more and more obvious. To feel it, one should undertake a short trip to east districts of the Stavropol Territory and on the route Pyatigorsk-Nalchik-Nazran. As for suppression, it is connected with establishing of working places. But it is clear that making important decisions should require an ethnologic analysis, not only economic and political one.
