By Vestnik Kavkaza
The struggle against illegal migration, which is being actively undertaken at the moment, hasn’t brought the expected results yet. However, experts say that if immigration is not regulated within strict legal and executive limits, it will negatively influence the economy, inter-ethnic relations, and the criminal situation in Russia.
“A great amount of migrants especially from Central Asia and the former republics of the Soviet Union can lead to targeted destabilization of the situation in regions of the country,” says Yevgeny Primakov, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Russia. “Do we need labor migration at all? There is absence of selective migration policy, encouraging measures for inflow of professionals – most of migrants are able to do unskilled jobs. However, even such workers are demanded – in the sphere of construction, housing services and utilities, service, agriculture, the economy in general, as it lacks works of all professions. The destruction of technical education in the 1990s brings very negative consequences. I don’t know why the Ministry of Education doesn’t reconstruct the system of labor reserves.”
According to Primakov, “there are 12 400 000 migrants in Russia at the moment. According to the FMS, 60% of them are illegal, let’s be honest, they are uncontrollable. Illegal migrants find jobs in companies which are interested in very cheap labor force and non-payment of taxes. Illegal migrants are involved in organized criminal groups which are built on an ethnic fundament. These groups often cooperate with the police and control commercial markets. It seems the Interior Ministry and local authorities have agreed that the majority of city food markets are controlled by migrants. I don’t know whether the Interior Ministry has a program of eliminating migrant armed groups from city markets.”
Speaking about ways out, Primakov noted that approval of the law on responsibility of regional and municipal authorities for inter-ethnic conflicts has played an important role. “Fines for hiring illegal migrants should be radically increased; in case of secondary employment, the employee should be deprived of a right to hire migrants. We need a legal decision, according to which an employer should send copies of documents of a hired migrant to the FMS. We shouldn’t ignore that employers don’t pay social taxes for each hired migrant. The quota system should be seriously corrected. At the moment it consists of formalism, long registration, and numerous opportunities for a bribe. Such a situation pushes many employers to hiring illegal migrants.”
Primakov thinks that it is important to establish conditions for law-abiding professionals stay in Russia: “Benefits could be discussed for the category of migrants. We don’t pay enough attention to the involvement of young people from the CIS to Russian universities. I would like to point out the moral problem. One of our goals is that people who work in Russia not only stay in our country, but come back home and become our devoted friends. What do we need for this? We need the attention of employers, and the attention of people whom they see everyday at work.”
