The mountain gave birth to a mouse
The state program for the resettlement of compatriots, according to the idea of its creators, should help Russia solve two ambitious and difficult tasks – attract labor resources to regions where they are lacking and improve demographic indicators. According to Rosstat data, since 1992, more than 2 million people have died annually in Russia (with the exception of one year when slightly fewer died). Now there is some increase in birth rates, but so far the demographic situation in Russia is still supported by arriving migrants.
Last year, according to the head of the Department for Compatriot Affairs of the Federal Migration Service of Russia, Yevgeny Manyatkin, it was planned to accept up to 50 thousand people. In 2008, the number was supposed to double, and in 2009, triple. 'And if we talk about the prospect of 2012, by that time we expect to accept 683 thousand people,' said Vladimir Kaland, First Deputy Director of the Federal Migration Service.
And here are the first staggering results of the state program for the return of compatriots. Last year, from all countries of the former USSR, where, according to experts, 25 million Russians live, only about 35 thousand people declared their desire to move to their historical homeland. And only slightly more than 400 people arrived in Russia, according to the head of the Federation Council Committee on CIS Affairs Vadim Gustov.
The director of the Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, gave his 'alternative' figures at the hearings. He reported that 28 thousand people submitted applications for resettlement under the state program. At the next stage of moving towards Russia, only 3 thousand filled out resettlement questionnaires, then 74 people received settler certificates, and only 26 people returned to their historical homeland.
Experts believe that the failure of the compatriot resettlement plan in the form in which it was proposed to society and potential repatriates was predetermined. According to the program, the regions where resettlement of compatriots is planned are divided into three groups. Group 'A' includes border territories – Primorsky and Khabarovsk Krais, Kaliningrad Oblast, and others. Settlers in these regions are supposed to receive increased relocation allowances from the state – 60 thousand rubles per program participant and 20 thousand for each family member. In regions of group 'B' (where large innovative projects are being implemented and labor is needed – for example, Krasnoyarsk Krai) the payment is supposed to be less – 40 and 15 thousand rubles, respectively. All other regions are assigned to group 'C', where no one will be given anything at all, and they will have to pay for the move and transport of household belongings themselves.
These more than modest preferences for repatriates explain a lot about the failure of a program of national importance. By the way, Russia was at least 15 years late with it. The spoon would have been good for dinner – in the early 90s, when millions of Russians rushed headlong to their historical homeland. And now, when the situation has changed both in Russia itself and in many former Soviet republics, moving under such modest starting conditions is unlikely to seem attractive to people who have a profession, job, and housing.
The second reason for the failure of the program is the position of the regions. As Konstantin Romodanovsky was forced to admit at the Duma hearings, the state program is not interesting to the regions. To date, 14 constituent entities of the Russian Federation have refused to participate in it, and Moscow and St. Petersburg have developed their own special conditions, according to which settlers can only settle in neighboring regions.
The reason for the reluctance to participate in the program is banal: the federal leadership shifted the burden of providing housing for settlers onto the shoulders of local authorities. 'We cannot give any guarantees to compatriots regarding providing them with apartments or houses. It depends on the host regions. But at the federal level, we cannot guarantee anything to these people,' said Natalya Molchanova, Deputy Head of the Migration Service of the FMS, during a speech in the State Duma. So why was the program adopted?
'You are not citizens of Russia. Complain wherever you want.'
According to experts, the program for the return of compatriots once again vividly reminded of another problem: hundreds of thousands of people who, in the 90s, abandoning everything they had, went to Russia, still cannot legalize here and solve their migration problems. Those who returned on their own, due to circumstances and at the behest of their hearts, without waiting for any program, turned out to be unwanted, outcasts in their own homeland.
There are plenty of such bitter stories. Here is one typical one. 'I have two daughters – Anastasia and Elena,' says Vyacheslav Artemovich Prokudin. 'Both were born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakh SSR, where my wife and I went in 1977 on assignment after the Novosibirsk Electrotechnical Institute. In 1984, due to the illness of the elder one, on the advice of doctors, we were forced to move to Moldova. There we were caught by the collapse of the USSR and the civil war. Being Russian already meant being a second-class person.'
Hoping that the Motherland would not abandon them in trouble, the Prokudin family, after studying the Law 'On Citizenship of the Russian Federation' of the 1991 edition, which, in particular, states that 'persons born on December 30, 1922 or later and who lost citizenship of the former USSR are considered to have been citizens of the Russian Federation by birth if born on the territory of the Russian Federation,' sent their daughters (one at the end of 1992, and the second in 1995) to their grandfather and grandmother in Biysk, Altai Krai, to receive secondary education in the Russian language. Upon reaching adulthood, both Prokudin daughters legally obtained passports of citizens of the Russian Federation. They graduated excellently from school and then from Moscow universities. Nothing, it seemed, foreshadowed trouble. Nastya and Lena subsequently changed their Russian passports more than once, they also received foreign passports, they were deregistered from their previous place of residence, registered at a new one, etc.
'The thunder struck,' Vyacheslav Artemovich is worried, 'in 2007, when one of the daughters applied to the UFMS of the Khoroshevsky District of Moscow for a passport due to a change of surname after marriage, and the second one to exchange a foreign passport.' The Russian Nastya and Lena, who had been in Russian citizenship for 10 and 15 years respectively, all of whose close relatives on both father's and mother's side are also Russian, were told that they are 'not citizens of Russia.' The whole cynicism of the situation is that such a conclusion to the request from Moscow came from... that very UFMS of Biysk which once issued them passports of citizens of the Russian Federation!
'I had to communicate with officials from the UFMS, from the district level to the head of the FMS of Russia, General Smorodin. Nobody wants to look into the essence of the matter, they don't want to listen to anything. Everywhere the answer is the same: "Not citizens!" It has come to the point that my daughters are required to surrender their Russian passports, they are being put on the wanted list, they are trying to force them to obtain Russian citizenship as foreigners!' Prokudin is outraged. By the way, the Prokodins are going through this hell for the second time. 'My wife and I also got it,' says Vyacheslav Artemovich. 'For two years we proved that we are not camels, but Russian people, born in Russia and by birth, according to the law, have its citizenship.'
To revoke the decision on termination of Russian citizenship, according to the law, is possible only on the basis of 'the fact of providing deliberately false information and fake documents.' Moreover, this fact 'is established in a judicial procedure.' No trial, of course, was conducted regarding the Prokodins. Receiving Russian passports many years ago, they did not deceive anyone in anything.
The Prokodins themselves applied on December 21, 2007 to the Savyolovsky District Court of Moscow to prove the invalidity and absurdity of what was happening. And what then? The court ruled that this case... is not subject to jurisdiction and sent them back to the UFMS. Having taken a circular defense, the Prokudin family appealed this decision. A new trial was scheduled. 'What have we done wrong before the Motherland, which once sent us to fulfill our civic duty in the Kazakh steppes?! Why have the Russian authorities been mocking us for years?' the Prokodins ask themselves. Because apparently, there is no one else to ask in the Motherland.
This story is a drop in the ocean of suffering of our compatriots. And from January 1, 2008, these people will get even worse. Moreover, in a legal, so to speak, order: one and a half million people who failed to obtain citizenship by that date will have to obtain it through the usual procedure - within seven years.
But to solve such problems, you don't even need to open new and costly programs. These people demand nothing from the country. They have long since solved all their problems with work and housing themselves, they pay taxes regularly. One thing is needed: to force officials to comply with the law. And if it (the law) is not precise enough or allows for different interpretations, is it really so difficult to amend it to make life easier for millions of compatriots, about whom politicians of all stripes love to talk from high podiums?
Alla YAROSHINSKAYA. 