Whenever the issue of "guests" from neighboring countries comes up, the image of a poor freezing Tajik is conjured up. He is ready to do any work as long as he is able to remit a few hundred dollars a month to his large family in his home country. It is an open secret that gastarbeiters, whose number in Russia is estimated at 6 million to 10 million, cause a lot of problems.
Immigrants could conveniently be divided into four categories. Category 1: gastarbeiters from the former Soviet republics, as well as from China and some Southeast Asian nations. Category 2: people who have come from the so-called surplus manpower parts of Russia, mainly from the North Caucasus. Category 3 (less conspicuous): those who in the past 16 years have found an opportunity to return to their motherland, which they suddenly lost following the breakup of the Soviet Union in
1991. Finally, Category 4: 24 million Russians living outside of Russia, who can and should be regarded as potential immigrants.
Often these four groups of real and potential immigrants are erroneously lumped together and, which is even worse, universal methods are proposed for resolving their problems.
In Reverse
When talking about Category 1 immigrants, one cannot help wondering why, during the Soviet era, the flow of gastarbeiters was mainly from central Russia to Central Asian republics, the Ukraine, and Moldova, but now it has effectively reversed. This is quite explicable. In the Soviet Union, citizens were often forced to work at "priority construction projects." These were part of Soviet five-year plans, known as pyatiletki. Furthermore, wages were higher, including a Soviet-era bonus system for hardship regions. Russia today is not rich, but compared to its post-Soviet neighbors, it is far more attractive. Therefore, the vector of labor migration has changed considerably.
It is commonly believed that Russia's growing economy simply cannot develop without a massive inflow of working immigrants from neighboring (mostly post-Soviet) countries. That is taken almost for granted. But according to official statistics, Russia has about 6 million of its own unemployed citizens; this means that there is not a real shortage of manpower. Why then do such large numbers of gastarbeiters have no problem getting a job here? It is usually said in response to this question that unemployed Russians do not want to work in unskilled jobs that gastarbeiters are ready to do.
This explanation seems logical. The only problem with it is that a mere 700,000 of the almost 10 million foreign nationals in Russia work officially. The others work illegally and for peanuts, which creates unfair competition with respect to Russians. Meanwhile, consciously or unconsciously, the most important question is ignored - i.e., would unemployed Russians from depressed regions not be ready to do the same "non-prestigious" jobs (is it really so bad to work as a fixed-route taxi driver?) if they are paid fair wages?
It seems that this situation suits many Russian employers. Illegal workers bring huge profits, while not demanding compliance with labor laws. Furthermore, employers do not have to pay taxes. In addition to that, the existence of a huge army of illegal workers effectively blocks all attempts to form a viable trade union movement in Russia.
The problem is not how many billion of dollars foreign workers in Russia remit to their families every year: that is payment for their real work. But the citizens of a country that provides them an opportunity to make a living must not suffer on account of overstrained social and transport infrastructure, which does not develop as it should because it lacks vital tax revenues. Moreover, amid such chaotic immigration, unemployed illegal immigrants are a de-socializing breeding ground for crime.
Moscow Is Not Inflatable
Paradoxically, the first to raise the alarm was the mayor of Moscow, a city where average wages are the highest in Russia. And the capital really does have a manpower shortage. Nevertheless, the infrastructure of the capital, where more than 30 percent of labor immigrants come (over 50 percent, including the Moscow region around the city), is simply not designed to handle such a number of people. Nor are the law enforcement agencies able to cope with the problem: what is even worse, they are becoming increasingly corrupt because of the immigrants. Luzhkov proposed an array of rather harsh measures, in particular, reducing the quota of labor immigrants in Moscow several times, introducing mandatory residence registration for them, and even instituting liability for renting apartments to illegal immigrants.
Recently, the Federal Migration Service (FMS) has been making special efforts to enforce law and order in this realm, and take immigrants out of the shadows. Ill-wishers asserted that Russia (in the FMS) is fighting immigrants. As a matter of fact, there are two opposing sides here - not the FMS and immigrants, but the FMS (together with the immigrants and the ruling authorities of the republics from which they come) and unscrupulous employers: after all, the Russian authorities have started slapping hefty fines not on illegal immigrants, but on their employers.
Close the Borders?
But enforcement of elementary law and order does not take the main problem off the agenda: does the Russian economy really need so many gastarbeiters? And, are these apparent benefits not outweighed by the problems that arise in the social realm as well as in interethnic relations?
The problem of uncontrolled migration is closely interconnected with another, no less acute problem. Of late, there has been much talk about Russia's sovereign democracy. This brings up the question: can a country consider itself to be sovereign if it has porous, uncontrolled borders? It could be argued that Europe, in effect, no longer has borders. Indeed, within the European Union (EU), these borders are invisible, but then the Schengen zone - the outer perimeter of united Europe - is guarded very heavily. The EU has a system of mutual obligations, data exchange and information sharing, whereas a visa-free regime exists between the majority of CIS countries. There are virtually no internal borders in the Commonwealth of Independent States, nor is there a coherent border protection policy.
For example, Ukraine is currently in negotiations with the EU on visa simplification. The EU has demanded that Kiev abolish visas for Romanian and Moldovan nationals. Ukraine has balked, but it has yet to open consultations with other CIS countries, which, considering the visa free regime that exists between them, are directly affected.
It seems that sooner or later, the CIS will have to deal with the border issue. Possibly, following the Schengen model, they will create a controlled external perimeter (true, that is impossible without political integration). Or they may secure their own internal borders and introduce visas. Now, what does that have to do with labor migration? There is an obvious connection here. Without joint control of migration flows and protection of external borders, a reasonable migration policy is impossible. No migration service - no matter how large and powerful - can cope with these tasks. For some reason, there do not seem to be any street sweepers from Africa. But dark skinned doorkeepers are already stationed outside one out of three restaurants in Moscow or Kiev - and that is only a beginning. President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, who is the current chairman of the CIS Council, said that labor migration and the formulation of a common policy is this realm is a priority for the CIS this year. This opinion should be heeded before it is too late.
By Vladimir Zharikhin, Deputy Director of the Institute of the CIS Countries
