"Migrants are not harmful, but useful," said the head of one of the country's largest unions of entrepreneurs, speaking on behalf of the non-resource sector of the market. "And not only because they fill jobs, but also because they leave most of their income in Russia." According to him, the Russian business community has yet to feel a shortage of labor resources when the forecasts of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade come true, which assume a reduction in the country's working-age population by at least 2.5 million people by 2010.
However, entrepreneurs are already facing problems. First of all, the shortage of personnel is hitting industries where businesses note a significant increase in "labor costs," particularly construction, which employs up to 40% of all guest workers in the country, and processing industry and trade, which account for 30% of migrants. In addition, employers note the "degradation of the Russian workforce." "Young people are losing the skills of the previous generation, the authority of the working person, the new generation does not want to work," shared her observations Elena Nikolaeva, deputy chairman of "Delovaya Rossiya." "I am happy to hire those over 50 who still have pride in professionalism."
Despite the declaration of demography as a priority area of Russian social policy, businessmen still insist that the problem of labor shortage for stable economic development needs to be solved now, and not only by increasing the birth rate. Especially since there is an opportunity to use the resources of the CIS countries, whose citizens have maintained a mental, linguistic and cultural connection with Russia.
However, this resource too, according to the president of the Association of Builders of Russia Nikolai Koshman, may become a subject of competition and a deficit. "Kazakhstan and Ukraine, which are actively building, are already beginning to pull the blanket of labor migration over themselves," believes Nikolai Koshman. The business community is confident that in conditions of low mobility of the domestic workforce, migrants in no way infringe on the interests of the indigenous population, but occupy the most "unprestigious" positions with low requirements for education level. At the same time, the incomes of guest workers are rapidly approaching the wages of Russians, but migrants still win due to their ability to work and unpretentiousness in everyday life.
In such a situation, representatives of medium-sized businesses, for understandable reasons, do not share the government's overall satisfaction with the implementation of the new migration policy, although the authorities were praised for their attempt to build civilized mechanisms for filling the labor market. At the same time, the business community categorically disagrees with the repressive position of officials trying to "curb and not let in" migrants.
According to Elena Nikolaeva, it is the conscientious business that openly "declared" its labor reserve that first took the corruption blow of the bureaucracy. State Duma deputy Margarita Barzhanova also spoke about the corruption component of the application form for obtaining permits to use foreign labor, which assumes that the official will decide how many and what profession of guest workers the entrepreneur needs. In her opinion, it is dangerous to shift the issues of economic feasibility of attracting foreign workers by a particular enterprise to officials without having an idea of the country's overall needs.
According to Boris Titov, the application procedure causes particular difficulties for small and medium-sized businesses, where the need for foreign labor is not so great but may vary from time to time. Therefore, "Delovaya Rossiya" in the final resolution of the conference proposed that official representatives of the authorities set aside for entrepreneurs a reserve of annual quota for issuing work permits of at least 50% of the regional need for attracting migrants. In addition, the business community hopes that the state will relieve employers from the need to obtain permits for workers attracted from the CIS countries and amnesty migrants of the "pre-reform" wave who have employment contracts in hand. For its part, the business expressed willingness to teach foreign workers Russian and fight illegal agencies for recruiting foreign personnel, creating its own organization for attracting external labor resources for members of "Delovaya Rossiya."
However, judging by the speeches of official representatives, business complaints are the result of quite natural "failures and misunderstandings" in the context of forming a new mechanism for managing migration flow. According to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian Foreign Ministry had to work hard to ensure that changes in legislation did not lead to friction at the interethnic and interstate level. However, officials are confident that it will not get easier in the future, but these difficulties are justified because the country will have a "real mechanism for regulating the migration flow according to such criteria as quantity, qualification, profession, and even country of origin."
According to Alexander Safonov, Director of the Department of Labor Relations and State Civil Service of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, the state's conscious migration policy is just transitioning to a second, more complex level. At the first level, legislation was formed that, according to Deputy Head of the Federal Migration Service Vyacheslav Postavnin, meets "global standards of humanism." In particular, it was possible to equalize the rights of migrants and Russian citizens, raising the average wages of guest workers from 200 rubles to 500 rubles per day, and also forcing employers to sign contracts and fulfill social and insurance obligations. Now, it is necessary to change the legal consciousness of ordinary Russian citizens and law enforcement agencies and to study the country's need for foreigners. Therefore, as "Vremya Novostei" notes, the refusal of application-based processing of permits is not part of the officials' plans. Nor is a migration amnesty.