End of registration
However, let's start from the beginning. Namely, with the fundamental changes in the system of accounting and legal status of foreign citizens adopted by the Russian State Duma back in June 2006.
The first thing a foreign citizen must do upon entering Russia is to obtain a migration card, which is issued free of charge at the border crossing. The law essentially did not affect the provisions regarding the migration card. However, at the next stage – the registration stage – radical changes occurred. In fact, the new law abolishes the institution of registration itself and instead introduces a notification procedure for accounting for foreign citizens, while not leaving the authorities the right to refuse. In practice, it looks like this: any foreigner who arrives in Russia must, within three days 'from the day of arrival at the place of stay,' notify the migration service of their place of residence. More precisely, it is not the foreigner who notifies, but the host party (any legal entity or individual who has provided the foreigner with housing or work). One of the most radical innovations of the law is the ability not to go to a migration service office, but to send a postal notification on a special form and not worry about anything else. In fact, the detachable portion of this form, stamped at the post office, is now the document confirming the legality of the foreigner's stay on Russian territory. The authorities have neither the right nor even the possibility to refuse registration. Whether the notification was received or not, whether the migration service liked how it was filled out or not – this does not affect the legal status of the foreigner.
The not very clear phrase 'from the day of arrival at the place of stay' also has a very important meaning. Previously, the start of the three-day period was the moment of crossing the Russian border, so a foreigner who flew to Moscow and immediately boarded a train, for example, to Vladivostok, would already be a malicious illegal alien halfway through the journey. Even without such extreme cases, it often happened that after transfers from plane to plane (as well as flight delays and other mishaps), the foreigner simply had no time to register legally. Now the starting point is precisely the 'place of arrival,' which eliminates all these absurdities. However, at the same time, it creates new ones. It is not entirely clear which document should attest to 'the day of arrival at the place of stay' – a transport ticket? But what if a person travels by car? What about those who travel around the country without staying anywhere for more than three days? Neither federal nor local migration service officials can give clear answers to these questions today. However, this is not the only problem related to the practical application of the new law.
What is much more important is that the main innovation of the law on accounting for foreign citizens – the postal notification – is not working. The fact is that the Russian government, according to the law, 'must establish the form of the notification itself, the form of expressing the consent of the host party, and the list of attached documents' – that is, a list of what needs to be presented at the post office to send the notification. However, of all of the above, only one thing has been done: the fee for sending the notification by mail has been set at 118 rubles. Therefore, today, at least at the time of writing this article, there were no forms at the post office yet. However, this problem will likely be resolved soon, and most likely, there will not be many such documents. Postal workers are not professional clerks and will not sort through a pile of papers, so for the system to work at all adequately, the list of documents to be provided must be extremely concise, and their form as simple as possible.
Another problem of the new law turned out to be the deregistration procedure. The law states that the host party must, within two days from the moment of 'departure of the foreigner from the place of stay,' send the detachable portion of the form to the migration service. From this it follows that the foreigner must give this detachable portion before leaving. However, it is not entirely clear (not only to us, but also to responsible officials) how after that he will prove to a police officer who stops him the legality of his stay at the 'place of stay.' It is also unclear what the host party will do in case the foreigner loses his detachable portion: previously, it bore no responsibility for the safekeeping of migration documents.
And finally, the adoption of the new rules led to a certain embarrassment related to the agreement between Russia and Ukraine, signed before the historic Ukrainian elections of 2004. Under this agreement, Ukrainian citizens could stay in Russia without registration for up to 90 days. After the adoption of the new procedure for accounting for foreign citizens, there is no longer any registration at the place of stay, only 'migration registration' – meaning the agreement continues to be in effect, but what to do with Ukrainian citizens is unclear. The Federal Migration Service decided that the agreement exempts Ukrainians from registration but not from 'migration registration.' As a result, Ukrainian citizens lost any preferences, and the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry sent a note to the Russian government demanding clarification of the situation.
However, it is obvious that all these problems and absurdities (and we have noted only the most obvious ones and those that have already emerged in the first days of the new law's operation) will be eliminated one way or another in the process of adjusting the law to reality. And even if this adjustment does not go very smoothly, the very fact of abolishing registration, the transition to a notification-based registration procedure, and the possibility of sending a notification by mail – this is indeed a revolutionary step.
Even gentler
In the same vein, the amendments to the Federal Law 'On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation' concerning temporary stay and the right to work are also maintained. These amendments mainly concern those who arrive in Russia under the visa-free regime. However, given that this category (citizens of CIS countries, except for citizens of Georgia and Turkmenistan) still accounts for almost two-thirds of migrants, the importance of the document should hardly be underestimated.
Simple registration allows one to stay in Russia for up to 90 days, while further stay requires a change of status – a temporary residence permit (TRP). And the new procedure does simplify the system for obtaining a temporary residence permit. The list of documents required when applying for a TRP has been reduced. Now it is only an application for a temporary residence permit; an identity document; a migration card; and a receipt for payment of the state fee (400 rubles). Registration at the place of residence – for those who have the status of a temporary resident, the need for such registration remains – is now of a notification nature. A certificate of absence of diseases dangerous to others must be provided within a month, and a certificate of income and registration with the tax authority only after a year.
The latter is very important, because under the old system (the certificate of health and solvency was submitted simultaneously with the application) a vicious circle emerged. Medical certificates quickly became outdated, and any delay in the decision led to the entire procedure having to be repeated. As for solvency, without a temporary residence permit it was impossible to get a normal job, and without a normal job it was impossible to achieve the required income level. Moreover, now to obtain a temporary residence permit, it is no longer necessary to renew the migration card every three months (i.e., to leave the country and re-enter it). And finally, a very important innovation of the law was the prescribed requirement for justifying a refusal and a clear procedure for appealing it.
The procedure for obtaining a work permit has also been noticeably simplified (for 'visa' countries, the procedure for obtaining a work visa remains). Here too, the list of documents is sharply limited, the procedure is structured, time frames for making a decision are defined (10 days from the date of application) and quite strict refusal criteria are set. In the original version of the law, even quotas for granting the right to work were abolished, but they were subsequently restored. At the end of last year, quotas for foreign labor were determined by a government resolution (quotas are handled by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade) – 6 million from visa-free countries and 309 thousand from visa countries. However, quotas for Moscow (there is a dispute over whether it will be 700 thousand or 1.5 million) and the Astrakhan region have not yet been determined.
Liberalization – the path to stabilization
So, the liberalization of migration legislation is evident – in some ways more, in some ways less revolutionary, but the overall logic of liberalization is obvious. However, to conclude from this that a flood of migrants will now pour into Russia would be not just premature, but simply incorrect. The logic of 'ban everything, and then there will be order' is as flawed as the logic of 'allow everything, and then there will be freedom.' Liberalization is one of the effective mechanisms of regulation, not a refusal of regulation as such.
What was wrong with the old 'prohibitive-permissive' system? It was not that it limited the influx of migrants, but that it did so very poorly. Poorly because, besides millions of legal migrants, there are now millions of illegal ones in the country. People without rights, and therefore without duties and obligations to the country, people who live on the fringes of law and society, which pushes them to behave accordingly. Poorly because it provoked corruption, which in turn led to an increase in the flow of illegal and semi-legal migrants. Against this background, liberalization looks like a path to normalization and stabilization. Especially since there is no libertarian extremism in the new system, nor is it expected.
Of course, the number of migrants in official records will increase in the near future, possibly even quite significantly, but their actual number is unlikely to change. Those who existed illegally, given the opportunity, will start to register and obtain temporary residence status and work permits. As a result, we will at least be able to understand how many migrants are actually in the country, how many work, who these people are, where they come from, and how long they have come for. And that is one of the most important tasks today.
One can argue endlessly about whether Russia needs countless hordes of migrants or, on the contrary, should urgently deport everyone who has ever 'come over.' But without the most basic information about how many migrants are actually in the country today and what they do, even a more or less sensible debate on the migration problem will be meaningless and unproductive. The problem today is not so much the abundance or lack of migrants, but the complete absence of adequate information about them and about the real opportunities and needs of Russia. Society, elites, and the authorities simply do not currently have enough information to build any comprehensive migration policy. The current innovations, firstly, help to obtain more adequate information (as they stimulate legalization), and secondly, create a viable framework that can later be built upon according to one or another project. That is, we gain a small amount of time needed to study the situation and develop a general migration policy strategy.
Market PR technology
A third document that came into force on January 15 can serve as an illustration of the lack of adequate information and the danger of following common myths: a government decree "On establishing the allowable share of foreign workers for 2007".
The amendments adopted in June to the law "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation", among other things, introduce the concept of "allowable share of foreign workers used by business entities in various sectors of the economy". According to the law, this share is regulated by a government decree, but may apply to both the entire Russia and individual regions. And on November 15, immediately after Vladimir Putin, following the events in Kondopoga, demanded that the government deal with the markets and ensure the interests of the indigenous population, a government decree was issued regulating the shares of foreign workers employed in retail trade. These shares look as follows:
* retail sale of alcoholic beverages, including beer – 0% of the total number of workers used by a business entity;
* retail sale of pharmaceutical goods – 0%;
* retail trade in stalls and markets – 40% for the period from January 15 to April 1, 2007, and 0% for the period from April 1 to December 31, 2007;
* other retail trade outside stores – 40% of the total number of workers used by said business entities for the period from January 15 to April 1, 2007, and 0% for the period from April 1 to December 31, 2007.
So, from January 15, no foreigners should remain in the trade of alcohol and medicines, and from April 1, they should not be in markets and generally in all retail trade outside stores. Moreover, it no longer matters whether they have a work permit or not – foreigners should not trade outside stores at all. The measure is all the more radical because it is precisely in markets and retail trade that the percentage of foreigners is highest.
It is obvious that this measure is not so much systemic as it is for PR. Before the elections, the authorities are fulfilling one of the main demands of society – to cleanse the markets of foreigners. And indeed, every time the problems of interethnic relations are discussed, the topic of markets arises by itself: they have seized all markets, do not let Russians trade, inflate prices, charge exorbitant fees for a place in the market, and generally behave arrogantly and boorishly. This is natural: the market is a place where citizens regularly encounter people of Caucasian and other foreign nationalities, but at the same time, in recent years, not a single conflict has occurred directly at the market; the market always turned out to be an additional argument that was recalled when passions were already heated.
Cleansing the Markets
If we set aside PR logic and analyze the situation from the point of view of common sense, it is easy to conclude that the fight against foreigners in the markets will lead not to lower prices and a wider assortment, but to the collapse of the entire market system. For better or worse, market trade relied on foreign labor, and not so much due to anyone's malice but due to entirely objective economic laws: the discount at which goods are sold is largely based on the cheapness of migrant labor. No migrants – no discount. No discount – no market. There is another reason that makes foreign diasporas an important element of market trade.
Judging by the first two weeks of the new order (even not the zero quota, but only 40%), everything is turning out exactly as common sense suggests. The markets have emptied; sellers of "indigenous nationality", left without foreign competitors, have also been left without buyers. Market owners are slowly beginning negotiations with authorities and contractors about converting the market into a shopping complex. Apparently, by summer, the cleansing of markets from foreigners in large cities risks finally turning into a cleansing of cities from the markets themselves.
However, even this ill-conceived PR initiative can still be turned to good use. There is no harm without good – the current blow against foreigners is destroying the ugly monopolistic market system that has developed over the past fifteen years. Even if foreigners are not the only or even the main culprits of this situation, without them the markets will no longer work as before. But to take advantage of the situation and build a new system in place of the collapsing one, one must at least have a general idea of what kind of markets are needed, what system will serve the interests of the population and the economy. One variant of such a change has long been implemented: markets are closing, and new shopping complexes with shiny floors and fancy escalators are appearing in their place. However, places in these markets are already much more expensive than in the old ones, and retail prices are much higher. And the assortment is poorer. As a result, Russian cities (not only Moscow) are gradually overtaking world capitals in terms of the cost of a food basket, and in terms of the ratio of salaries and pensions to the cost of living, they will soon have no equals in the world. If such a situation does not suit Russians, there is not much time left to decide what to do with the markets. Moreover, whatever decision is made on this issue, the zero quotas for foreigners in markets will have to be lifted. Without them, no system can be built.
From all the above it does not at all follow that the system of regulation through quotas by industry and field of activity cannot be useful and meaningful. But for it to be effective, we must first understand where and in what areas Russians can manage on their own, without foreigners, where they can be dangerous, and where free competition can be allowed. For example, today there is much talk that during the implementation of the national project 'Health', the work of a district doctor has become quite attractive for foreigners, but no one can clearly answer whether this is good or bad, what problems it may lead to or what gains it promises. Moreover, it is not at all necessary to make decisions for the whole of Russia; the law stipulates the possibility of applying quotas in individual regions.