Russia needs permanent residents, not guest workers
- Your speech at the round table was the most radical. Is that because you view the situation from a special 'global' bell tower? And please tell us, what is the Global Commission on Migration, which you joined at the invitation of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan?
- The Global Commission of International migration came into being because the process of globalization makes migration one of the world's top priorities. In total, the commission has 25 scholars and public figures from different countries. I represent not only the former republics of the Soviet Union, but also the states of Eastern Europe. The commission is preparing a report on the world migration situation and giving recommendations to governments on adequate ways to solve problems in their countries.
- You stated that Russia's migration policy is essentially anti-migration and that partial amendments to the laws will not fix the situation.
- We need to change the concept of prohibitive migration policy as soon as possible. The senselessly cruel laws 'On Citizenship' and 'On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens' were supposedly adopted to combat dangerous illegal migration, but they primarily hit a significant part of our country's residents and potential migrants - our former compatriots, who remain largely culturally related to Russians, possess qualities that are extremely necessary for our society, and most importantly, want to live and work in Russia. Two or even three million newcomers who moved to Russia long ago and legally (under the visa-free regime), managed to integrate, find work, pay taxes to the state, suddenly learn: under the new laws they are illegal aliens, and any of them can be deported by the authorities any day. This is absurd. Immigration amnesty should have been carried out, as is done in many countries, at least six months before the new laws.
- The very name 'immigration amnesty' caused much bewilderment. They say amnesty is only for criminals...
- Well, let's replace this term adopted in world practice with the word 'legalization'. But the point is not in words!
- How many tragedies occur because the legalization procedure is unbelievably complicated - as if on purpose, so that any official can take pleasure in tormenting a newcomer. Recently in Serpukhov we held a meeting between passport and visa service workers and resettlers. An old woman with orders (she was a partisan in the war) knelt before the presidium and tearfully begged: 'Give me a gift for Victory Day - grant me Russian citizenship.' Anna Petrovna Smirnova moved to her daughter from Ukraine and has been suffering for two years without a pension or medical insurance. Due to the lack of certificates, she is not given either a residence permit or citizenship. She needs to collect more than a dozen certificates (90-year-old elderly people are forced to take AIDS tests), and while a person obtains them, others may become outdated. The execution begins anew.
- I myself have been observing for two years the torment of a married couple from Uzbekistan (he is Uzbek, she is Korean), who have good professional training and excellent human qualities, but suffer humiliation and difficulties in order to live and work in Russia. Even a letter to the OVIR of the South-Western Administrative District of Moscow, signed by me as a member of the government commission on migration policy, and a positive resolution from the commission chairman on extending registration without leaving for Uzbekistan did not help: go, come back, pay a fine of 500 rubles for one day of delay (it fell on weekends and holidays) - and only then for another three months.
Resettlement to Russia has practically ceased. But Russia needs migrants, and not guest workers, but permanent residents.
- Legalization of various categories of migrants could become a breakthrough in the current situation.
- But who will do this delicate work? Due to reorganizations, the migration service has actually been destroyed; experienced employees have left. I was shown a draft presidential decree on the new structure of the FMS. It turns out it is being merged with the passport and visa service, which has its own offices in every city and even village - a huge staff. Migration as a problem will drown in this melting pot. However, the agency will still be called the Federal Migration Service. And oddly enough, now we will all go to change our passports at the 'migration office' for some reason. That is, we will all become a little bit migrants.
At the same time, no conceptual documents on migration policy have ever stated that the main goal of migration policy and the relevant services is to ensure migration to Russia. And yet that is precisely what the fundamental principle should be.
- There has long been talk about transferring matters of registration, residence permits and citizenship to the FMS. An experiment was conducted in three pilot regions. Given that it is precisely the issues of legalization that have become the main torment for migrants, perhaps it would be logical for all of them to be resolved in one 'native' agency...
- But we know what 'kindred' feelings the militia harbors towards migrants. At one time it was noted: to transfer migration to the militia is like attaching an animal protection society to a meat-packing plant. The new project depicts a frightening monster that will have to perform purely control and registration functions, and with regard to the entire population of the country. I read and could not believe my eyes: the FMS must develop and implement 'comprehensive measures for fulfilling mobilization tasks and civil defense measures', ensure 'the functioning of the state system of military registration'. To conduct searches for some debtors... What does migration have to do with it!
- Many experts, like you, actively reject the project.
- It is naive to expect that a law enforcement agency can attract useful migrants to Russia. Strange things are happening: the president says that we need not prohibitions but an effective migration policy, and they prepare such a document for him to sign...
- There is hope that the draft decree will not reach the president in this form after all. The text was composed before Andrei Chernenko returned to the FMS, and I know the document is now being edited.
- It's good that Chernenko has been reappointed head of the FMS. At least he won't have to study the problem from scratch: he is a capable manager.
The ideology of anti-migration policy, however, was developed by a certain interdepartmental working group headed by Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Viktor Ivanov. It was this group that was responsible for the adoption of such laws. The president, in turn, had to introduce amendments to the law 'On Citizenship' and actually apologize for others' mistakes. The question arises: why do the real culprits bear no responsibility?
- The presidential amendments could have created a legal basis for immigration amnesty (legalization). But at the final stage, obtaining citizenship was tied to having registration at the place of residence, that is, permanent propiska. But its absence is precisely the main problem for migrants! Experts of the human rights commission, led by Ella Pamfilova, proposed a solution: let the path to citizenship be opened not only by registration but also by 'other confirmations of the fact of permanent residence.' Just five words. But they were dropped from the draft. And now many officials simply ignore even court decisions on the fact of permanent residence.
- I have thought a lot: where does such migrantophobia in our country come from? Explaining everything by everyday ignorance ('they all came here...') would be too simple. Rejection of outsiders is characteristic of all local communities. But for anti-migrationism to become official policy - that is our Russian know-how. The question is: why, who benefits from this?
It is obvious that repressive migration legislation plays into the hands of corruption. It is not without reason that those two laws are called 'bribe-intensive'. But that is not the main thing. And one cannot blame everything on the executors (they say the militia has such a professional mentality - to suspect a criminal in every person). Both the bad laws and the executors who do not match the problem did not arise by themselves, but because they were in demand by anti-migration policy. Supporters of prohibitive measures acted (and continue to act), as they say, out of conscientious delusions. They apparently believe that they have caught the mood of the broad masses and that with this hatred of 'those who flooded in' one can consolidate the electorate and support the president's high rating.
- However, we have already, as you remember, been trying for almost 15 years to prove that migrants are not a burden, but a benefit for Russia. With our demographic crisis and the sparsely populated expanses of Siberia and the Far East, the current anti-migration policy is a serious threat to the country's national security.
- Alas, it is always harder to set a positive tone than to inflame bad passions. So the media and politicians say: we only reflect the mood in society. That is not true. Look at many TV programs where chauvinists of a nationalist bent set the tone. If people were more often explained that the same Tajik builders live here in inhuman conditions only so that once a week they can send a bag of grain to their families - to save them from hunger...
And if scientists calculated what economic benefit migrants have already brought to the country and to many of us personally (cheap apartment renovations, dacha construction, care for children, the sick, etc.), the mood, I think, would change. We are all to some extent involved in the exploitation of these people. And many probably think that if black traders are driven away from the markets, the watermelons, melons, and vegetables will still remain.
In about two years, as demographers predict, the market will put everything in its place: in Russia, as in the whole of Europe, labor will become the biggest shortage, and countries will start luring migrants from each other. But how many more Tajik girls and African students will die at the hands of skinheads in these two years? And will future migrants go to such a dangerous country?