Without waiting for the benefits promised by the authorities, participants of the repatriation program are leaving Russia
The Federal Migration Service (FMS) is not particularly alarmed by the outflow of repatriates yet. However, Mikhail Tyurkin was forced to admit that the hopes of some migrants for a "new old homeland" were not justified. Moreover, according to him, some potential migrants are now being denied already at the questionnaire stage.
"There is tension on the labor market, there is no demand for some professions," explained the deputy head of the FMS. The official also did not deny that locally there is still a "misunderstanding that migrants are needed, first and foremost, by the regions."
The issue of providing housing to repatriates remains one of the most difficult for the authorities of the first 12 pilot regions where the program is being implemented. And although, as Mikhail Tyurkin assures, there are fewer and fewer regions where the leadership does not share the federal "policy of hospitality," it has not yet been possible to significantly expand the program's scope.
Currently, according to him, the program is implemented in 16 federal subjects — the Kursk, Omsk, Penza, and Kurgan regions have joined the first-wave regions. By the end of the year, the FMS hopes, potential repatriates will be able to look for work in Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Kemerovo regions and Kamchatka Krai.
True, judging by the mood of FMS officials, amid the labor market crisis, the problem of labor shortage and attracting specialists from abroad has become much less of a concern than two years ago. "We did not set the task of bringing the maximum number of compatriots to the territory of Russia, but we wanted to give the opportunity to return to those who have not found their place, who morally feel themselves citizens of Russia," Mikhail Tyurkin assured journalists.
Let us recall, however, that initially over three years it was planned to attract at least 300,000 able-bodied migrants from the former USSR under the repatriation program. But at the start of repatriation in 2007, the authorities expected to attract only 25,000 people. True, the FMS failed to invite even that number of specialists from the former Soviet republics. According to the deputy head of the FMS, over more than two years of the project, 13,806 former compatriots moved to Russia — mainly from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
But from July 1 of this year, the simplified procedure for migrants to obtain Russian citizenship ceased to be in effect. And funding for the resettlement program in 2009 was cut to 1.8 billion rubles from the originally planned 6.5 billion rubles. As previously stated by the FMS, the reason for the sharp reduction in funds, from which "relocation allowances" are paid to newcomers, was both the lack of program participants and the need to save in the current financial situation.
Now FMS officials are banking on less costly ways to attract able-bodied foreigners with Russian roots. According to Mikhail Tyurkin, the migration agency hopes that by the end of the year their proposals to expand the number of program participants will be submitted for consideration to the State Duma.
The FMS, in particular, proposes to give the opportunity to obtain migrant status to those former compatriots who already live in the country, as well as to foreign students. At the same time, assistance, as Mikhail Tyurkin noted, "will not be the same as if they came from abroad."
Moreover, obtaining status will not be possible everywhere. "In Moscow, we cannot grant the status of a program participant," the deputy head of the FMS reminded, noting that the capital has refused to participate in the program.