According to data released by the IOM office at a press conference in Kyiv, about 70% of the total number of Ukrainians working abroad are men, who are employed in construction and retail trade. The vast majority of women abroad work in agriculture and as domestic servants. Most often, residents of rural areas and small towns, where there is a shortage of jobs, go abroad to work. Meanwhile, remittances from Ukrainians abroad amount to $5-7 billion per year, Interfax-Ukraine reports.
The IOM office also draws attention to the widespread prevalence of fraudulent schemes in the field of employment abroad and reminds of the existence since 2005 of migrant consultation centers, which operate in five regions of Ukraine and provide free consultations to people planning to go abroad.
According to the head of the IOM office in Ukraine, Jeffrey Labovitz, there are very few legal ways to go abroad (in particular, a pilot Czech project for highly qualified specialists), and the most common illegal way to go abroad is to obtain a visa through a travel agency and stay in another country longer than the specified period.
As for Russia, geographical proximity and a simplified visa regime allow our fellow citizens to look for work there without much difficulty. This explains the huge number of Ukrainian labor migrants who went to earn money in the neighboring country.
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