After the adoption in 2002 of the laws "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation" and "On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation", millions of citizens who came to Russia for permanent residence from the former Soviet republics moved into the category of "foreigners". At the beginning of November, the Federal Migration Service (FMS) announced that an experiment to grant amnesty to a million labor migrants would be conducted in 2006. This agency believes that it is cheaper to legalize guest workers than to deport them from the country. If the experiment succeeds, it will be enshrined in legislation.
Participants in the round table at Rosbalt came to the unanimous conclusion that immigration amnesty is not legally prepared. "A paradoxical situation has arisen: the number of illegal immigrants, against which the laws adopted in 2002 were directed, has not decreased but increased," said Lidia Grafova, leader of the movement "Forum of Resettlement Organizations". "The number of labor migrants now reaches 5 million people. Of these, 1.5 million have been waiting in line for years to obtain Russian citizenship." Millions of people, Grafova believes, cannot legalize because "obtaining citizenship is made directly dependent on registration at the place of residence, and where can a homeless migrant get a residence permit?".
"The threat to national security is posed not by migration itself, but by the mentality of officials, and primarily in the presidential administration," said Valery Tishkov, director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Public Chamber. In his opinion, FMS officials are convinced that "by driving Azerbaijanis out of the markets, all fruits can be kept available - this is a 'Soviet' delusion."
Galina Vitkovskaya, a senior researcher at the Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, drew the attention of round table participants to another significant flaw in the forthcoming amnesty. On the one hand, the legalization of guest workers will allow employers to avoid administrative and criminal liability for hiring illegal labor (punishable by a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles or imprisonment for up to five years). On the other hand, the employer himself is interested in illegal migration, since an illegal migrant can be paid less for work. "If a labor migrant is granted citizenship on the basis of an employment contract with the employer, then the whole idea of legalization will be jeopardized." After all, it is unknown what employers will choose: not to have problems with the passport and visa service or to bear increased costs associated with hiring a full-fledged citizen.