As Anatoly Baturkin reported, during the operation of the experimental immigration inspection (since April of this year), they conducted about a thousand inspections of various firms where illegal workers were employed - at construction sites, markets, housing maintenance offices, hotels, and in transport. Violations were found almost everywhere.
According to the existing Code of Administrative Offenses, the maximum an employer faces for illegally hiring foreigners is a fine of two thousand rubles (such amounts are usually imposed by the court) regardless of the number of illegal workers. From the workers themselves, according to Baturkin, the court collects fines of no more than 500 rubles.
The Immigration Inspection of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate is the only oversight body currently conducting inspections of capital firms. According to inspectors, most violations still occur at markets in the Eastern and Southern districts of Moscow. However, despite the scale of the problem, each individual case involves minor offenses. And among major violators, Moscow construction companies hold the leading position.
According to law enforcement officials, keeping illegal workers at construction sites is profitable for employers for several reasons. First, their labor is much cheaper than that of officially employed people. Moreover, the migrant workers themselves do not mind - in their homeland, citizens of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, or Moldova earn no more than 50-100 rubles a month. Therefore, meager Moscow salaries and unbearable working and living conditions seem quite tolerable to them.
In addition, an employer does not register a worker because fines for illegally hiring a foreigner are small, and the official procedure for registering a foreigner at a company is too labor-intensive. For example, to legalize each worker through the interdepartmental commission of the Moscow government, chaired by Valery Shantsev, the employer must gather 12 different documents and certificates, including a certificate from the tax police, the organization's charter, and a medical certificate for the foreigner being hired. Then, at the commission, one must also prove to Shantsev that, say, a citizen of Ukraine would be much more useful to the city than a Moscow resident applying for the same position. After all, it is the government that sets certain quotas for hiring foreign workers.
Finally, by not officially having a large number of employees, companies avoid frequent inspections by technical inspectorates that require compliance with industrial safety standards. Naturally, if all workers were legalized, the company would have to bear responsibility for each of them. And in the event of a worker's death, company managers could be imprisoned for up to five years (Article 143 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Violation of Labour Safety Rules").
To force companies to legalize workers, the police are proposing to introduce criminal punishment for the illegal hiring of workers. Specifically, employees of the Moscow City Internal Affairs Directorate's migration office propose sentencing employers to five years in prison. In addition, the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Federation and the capital's migration office want to increase the fine for using illegal foreign labor - from the current two thousand rubles to 50 minimum wages. According to police officers, only this will help ensure safe working conditions for migrant workers and also increase the number of job vacancies for Muscovites.