"We have problems with forced migrants," said the head of the FMS. "But there are about 40,000 of them in Russia. We have a program to provide them with housing."
Romodanovsky's statement was a response to a call from the chair of the executive committee of the international social movement "Forum of Resettlement Organizations" Lydia Grafova. She pointed out to deputies and FMS representatives that the millions of illegal migrants currently in Russia are exactly the same compatriots that the government is spending millions of rubles to attract. "80% of illegals have been living in our country for years. They found themselves outside the law as a result of the reforms of 2002," she noted. "And now you are suggesting that these people take their elderly parents and young children, go back to their homeland and return to Russia again. How can you be so cruel?"
Lydia Grafova asked FMS employees to answer her question, especially since less than a month remained before a decision on declaring amnesty. The law simplifying registration in Russia will come into force on January 15, 2007.
But Konstantin Romodanovsky never answered this question at the roundtable: immediately after Grafova's speech, he and his subordinates left the hall.
But the roundtable primarily discussed not amnesty for illegals, but the development of a unified migration policy. In other words, deputies were deciding how to make life so difficult for illegal migrants and their employers that their influx into Russia would finally decrease.
LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky proposed putting everyone who illegally crossed the border behind bars, stopping rail service with labor-donor countries, and even starting propaganda against illegal migrants in the country.
Senator Mikhail Kapura smiled at Zhirinovsky's proposal: "If we listen to you, half the country will be in jail, and the other half will be guarding them." He proposed fighting illegal migration by registering everyone entering Russia and taking fingerprints of any migrant suspected of or having committed a crime. Thus, according to the senator, it would be possible to somehow weed out undesirable visitors.
Deputy Chairman of the Duma Committee on Security Sergei Abel'tsev voiced perhaps the main idea hovering over the roundtable. He called on deputies and human rights activists to "stop propagating the thesis that Russia will perish without migrants." Konstantin Romodanovsky also hinted at this transparently, listing possible threats posed by illegals: "There are currently 5.3 million unemployed among Russians. The total damage from illegal activities has already amounted to 450 billion rubles. Migrants are carriers of infections, including AIDS." He noted that, among other things, the oversupply of migrants is the main reason for low wages in stores, markets, and pharmacies.
The deputies nodded approvingly. According to most of them, the only thing that quotas on the number of migrants could affect is the construction of elite housing. All other labor gaps, in the parliamentarians' opinion, should be filled by regional job seekers. But no one specified how to lure them into megacities with migrants' wages.