Moscow authorities promise entrepreneurs to ease the process of legalizing hired workers from neighboring countries, who are currently used in the Russian capital in almost all spheres - from trade to construction. As reported by 'Vremya Novostei', from April 1, the migration department of the Main Internal Affairs Directorate will use a 'single window' system when issuing work permits for guest workers, which should at least speed up the process of document processing.
'Of course, we will not make it in one day, but if we manage to do it in 30 days, that would already be good,' promisingly stated at a press conference the head of the Moscow migration department, Anatoly Baturkin. If the officials keep their promise, it will mean a fivefold reduction in the time for conducting the bureaucratic procedure. Indeed, according to Baturkin, in 2004 law-abiding entrepreneurs who tried to obtain documents for their workers from the former Soviet republics spent on average 145 days on this, and those who hired citizens from far abroad - as much as 210 days.
The obvious absurdity of the situation, when an employer even when hiring a seasonal worker had to spend almost half a year on bureaucratic red tape, was understood in the migration service itself. However, they agreed to liberalize the rules for the stay of labor migrants in Russia only after guest workers were recognized as a strategically important resource at all levels of government. The need for a 'thaw' in relations with those coming to Russia to earn money is today spoken about by President Vladimir Putin, government leaders, and legislators.
Speaking on Monday together with the heads of the Moscow migration department, State Duma deputy, member of the security committee Otari Arshba called for further improvement and simplification of the procedure for bringing guest workers out of the shadows. Arshba believes that Russia has no alternative to labor migration, which 'should become part of the state's personnel policy.' 'Russia's labor resources are practically exhausted today,' the deputy emphasized. Confirming the existence of a personnel shortage in Russia, Otari Arshba cited as a fresh example the construction of a new plant in Novokuznetsk - there, owners could not find a sufficient number of qualified builders locally and were forced to invite about a thousand builders from other regions.
In the deputy's opinion, in order to prevent such imbalances in the labor market, a clearly structured migration policy is needed, for which both the central government and local authorities would share responsibility. 'We need not those migrants who flood flea markets, but qualified personnel. We need to understand which specialties Russia requires and in which regions,' the deputy said. 'Today everyone is going to Moscow, but there is a need for labor in the provinces. But often local authorities try to 'regulate' migration on their own.'
At the same time, Otari Arshba, who has experience working in law enforcement agencies, emphasized that in the process of liberalizing migration legislation, 'it is necessary to maintain a balance of interests of four parties,' taking into account not only the aspirations of business and the migrants themselves, but also of the local population and local authorities. In the eyes of ordinary people, guest workers are mostly associated with crime. And, as police statistics show, these reproaches have grounds. 'Without work and registration, migrants commit crimes, mainly robberies and assaults,' said the head of the passport and visa department of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate, Alexey Mikulenko. 'Foreign citizens commit 38% of all crimes in the capital.' The police agree that liberalization of migration legislation will make life easier not only for the visitors themselves and employers, but also for law enforcement agencies. 'Either migration will be legal and controlled, or illegal and criminal,' concluded Deputy Otari Arshba from what was said by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate employees.
However, repressive measures - such as last year's severalfold increase in fines for employers using the labor of unregistered guest workers - also bring certain results. According to Anatoly Baturkin, in 2005 Moscow has already issued twice as many work permits as last year - 24,000 instead of 11,000. But it is unlikely that tangible results can be achieved by threats of fines and inspections alone. After all, only about 100,000 labor migrants have officially registered in Moscow so far, although according to expert estimates, the number of actual guest workers in the Russian capital exceeds one million people.