In particular, experts have long urged the government to use Germany's experience and create preferences for the naturalization of the Russian-speaking population of the former union republics, including those born in the RSFSR.
UNSOLVED PROBLEMS
Most independent experts believe that demographic problems and attracting labor migration are highly relevant for Russia, as for any European power. Officials also acknowledge this, stating that due to the imperfection of the naturalization system, Moscow incurs direct financial costs. According to data repeatedly voiced by representatives of the FMS, Russia's annual economic losses from illegal migrants amount to about $8 billion, including because the income of illegal immigrants bypasses the Russian treasury.
Another problem is the dumping rates for the services of migrant workers, whose number in Russia ranges from 7 to 14 million. Under zero taxation, they are the obvious winners in competition for jobs with Russian unemployed, whose number, according to Rosstat, exceeds 5 million people. "We need immigrants," said FMS head Konstantin Romodanovsky, speaking recently on the Rossiya TV channel. "This is an objective necessity. And therefore we need to use the opportunities of immigration in the interests of Russia. And people must understand this."
At the same time, in the field of attracting and legalizing migrants, Russia has enormous advantages over the countries of the Old World. A gigantic resource of labor migrants is located along the country's borders, and attracting these "working hands" is not burdened with such a problem as the cultural assimilation of migrants. After all, we are talking about people who are "to the point of identity" close to Russians, united by a common language, culture and traditions.
AND WE WEREN'T EXPECTING YOU!
"The main thing to think about is the integration of immigrants into society," Anatoly Vishnevsky, head of the Center for Demography and Human Ecology, believes. "Here the main task is to preserve the Russian language and culture, but here, first of all, they think about the shape of the eyes and hair color. Of course, the most desirable immigrants for us are Russians and Russian-speaking people, the second tier are citizens of the former Soviet republics, who mostly know the Russian language and are close to us in historical background." Such an approach, by the way, is close to the experience of the Federal Republic of Germany, which actively attracted Volga and Kazakh Germans, creating for them a special preferential regime for resettlement to the republic.
However, today it is hardest for ethnic Russian immigrants and Russian-speaking citizens of the former Soviet republics to adapt in Russia. "These people are not protected, but they are robbed in our consular offices," Svetlana Ganyushkina, chairwoman of the organization "Civic Assistance," told Strana.Ru. "Our consular offices must work quickly, not force people to stand in endless queues, promptly process all certificates, send to Russia documents characterizing people who need to relocate urgently. After all, people come here and try to naturalize already in Russia because they cannot endure those huge queues at consulates. But unlike migrant workers who, due to their poverty, are ready to settle for at least an illegal status, these people do not agree to live underground. They want to legally move with their families and property. They are not going to live in a box at a market; they consider Russia their homeland. Yes, we cannot pass a law on the repatriation of ethnic Russians by blood. We are a multinational country after all. But we can soften and make the law on foreigners reasonable, include in it preferences for those who were born in Russia, whose parents, grandfathers and grandmothers were born in Russia."
On the other hand, Russian-speaking migrants who go to Russia face the fact that they have nowhere to live, nowhere to work, and nobody needs them. “Perhaps they would have all moved long ago, but if there are no relatives here, no apartment, these people are not needed by anyone. As a result, they arrive, hang around for a while, and call us. But we can no longer help them in any way, since they are citizens of Russia, and we deal specifically only with those Russians who are abroad. Most often they ask for help: no documents, they are not hired, what should we do? We say: when you were oppressed in Turkmenistan, we worked through the embassy, through the Foreign Ministry. And now you are in Russia, like everyone else,” they told Strana.Ru in the Turkmenistan department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
In other words, there is no state program to support migrants. They also cannot count on maternity capital, with which the Russian authorities support families with children. An application for it can only be submitted after obtaining citizenship of the Russian Federation. There are no planned resettlements as such. There is no state order for the resettlement of ethnic Russian citizens. With some states, including neighboring countries where many ethnic Russians live, the RF has concluded agreements on voluntary resettlement. In these countries there are representations of the FMS. Future migrants who go to Russia voluntarily (for forced migrants, as well as for refugees, there is separate legislative regulation) receive special certificates there that make their move possible. The only benefit provided under this agreement is the duty-free movement of personal belongings and property. For example, it could be a car or money received from selling a house, provided that the authorities of the country you are leaving allow you to sell it. In some republics of the former USSR, this is not so simple.
The rest is at your own risk. The work of the FMS ends with the processing of documents. The migration service does not even handle the relocation of future full citizens of the RF. The state is not responsible for where voluntary migrants will live or work. There are also legal difficulties: locally, the permission to resettle is not always perceived as a document that signals legal crossing of the border. “When crossing the border, a person gets a stamp in their passport. But we have an interstate agreement on resettlement, according to which no visa is stamped. But somewhere in the provinces, a local district police officer may ask during a passport check: where is the stamp in your passport? Where is your entry visa?” they say in the department of international relations of the legal support directorate of the FMS.
And so people call the Foreign Ministry, the FMS, the Interior Ministry: we have moved, but what benefits are we entitled to? Without bothering to learn about their unenviable situation in advance, they move to the RF with a mass of ordinary Russian problems: finding housing, work, etc. It turns out that those people who had the opportunity to move and receive support from relatives, or who have enough of their own financial resources, have already moved long ago. What remain abroad are compatriots whose status is not very clearly defined in current legislation, and this has its reasons: it was drawn up in haste in the early 1990s, when people were pouring into the RF after the collapse of the USSR, and migration authorities were literally overloaded with work. It turns out that now these remaining, abandoned Russians have no incentive to voluntarily resettle in the RF, except, of course, for the dubious benefit of duty-free transport of personal property.
DRACONIAN LAW
A very “original” approach to solving migration problems exists in the legislative sphere. First, several million people who were formally considered citizens of Russia and living in the country were effectively deprived of citizenship after the new law “On Citizenship” came into force on July 1, 2002. Let us recall that under the old law, everyone who lived in Russia in 1992, on the day the new law came into force, was recognized as its citizens, unless they expressed a contrary desire. The new law recognized them all as “non-citizens,” erecting between them and naturalization a veritable Great Wall of China of numerous conditions for admission to citizenship.
“With colossal difficulty we managed to defend the rights of these people,” says Svetlana Gannushkina, chairwoman of the organization “Civic Assistance.” “We obtained court rulings that people lived in Russia at the time of February 6, 1992, after which we went to the police with applications for naturalization, where we achieved final victory. And even that became possible largely thanks to the intervention of the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court, Viktor Zhuykov. Otherwise, it was practically impossible to convince officials that if a person is automatically recognized as a citizen of Russia by force of law but has not formalized citizenship, no new law can deprive him of citizenship.”
For a year and a half, a veritable Battle of Borodino raged around this problem, but work on the amendments began only after the president gave the go-ahead to change the law, criticizing this act in his address to the Federal Assembly. And after the draft amendments reached parliament, the centrists, who until recently had been sinking any liberalization, hastily voted for them in the autumn of 2004.
The law currently in effect establishes a simplified naturalization procedure for certain categories, including foreign citizens and stateless persons registered at their place of residence in Russia as of July 1, 2002. Former citizens of the USSR registered at their place of residence in Russia as of July 1, 2002 will be naturalized without meeting the "residence requirement," the requirements for a source of subsistence and proficiency in Russian, and also without presenting a residence permit, if they declare their intention to acquire Russian citizenship before January 1, 2006. "Citizenship was at least available to those who had permanent registration in Russia, received an education in our country, and have parents or adult children who are Russian citizens," said Svetlana Ganyushkina. "It is now proposed to extend this period by another two years."
Other steps were also taken to address a number of problems. Thus, this year a new type of migration card was introduced for foreigners, and the period of stay without registration was extended (up to 90 days) for Ukrainian citizens. On the other hand, liability for violating the registration regime has been significantly tightened - administrative fines for using "black" labor increased (up to 3,000 minimum wages), and the Criminal Code was expanded with Article 322.1, under which organizing illegal migration can lead to five years in prison. In other words, the state is trying in every way to force companies to register guest workers.
Experts, however, consider such steps half-measures. "The main obstacle to the legalization of migrants from the former Soviet republics remains the law 'On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation,'" explained Svetlana Ganyushkina. "Here is a concrete example: a Muscovite, a Russian citizen with six children, is married to a Ukrainian woman. She could not obtain a temporary residence permit because she needed to confirm that she had funds in the amount of the subsistence minimum for three years. We managed to help them, but I can say that the migration agency staff in fact violated their own law."
Human rights activists hope that in the future the state's policy will be softened. The speech by Romodanovsky on the "Rossiya" TV channel also speaks in favor of the authorities' readiness to meet migrants halfway. "We hope that next year we will be able to legalize or determine the legal status of about one million people," he noted. "Then people will not hide in some dungeons, but will work calmly and will be somehow integrated into labor activity." The head of the FMS noted that all the service's efforts are "aimed at ensuring that every immigrant arriving in Russia receives his or her legal status."
Филипп СТЕРКИН, Ангелина ТИМОФЕЕВА,
Наталья КОРЧМАРЕК.