The end of last year and the beginning of this one were marked by the launch of several FMS projects, as a result of which the number of guest workers in Russia increased by several thousand. At least, in official lists. The so-called migration amnesty, which was conducted in some Russian regions as an experiment, brought 7,500. Actually, as Sergei Boldarev clarified, this is not exactly an amnesty, because it is not a matter of the state's mercy towards lawbreakers, but only the retroactive legalization of foreign workers already on Russian territory. Moreover, as is known, the experiment concerned only citizens of the CIS who cross borders without visas. “The main goal of the experiment: first, to understand the need for such events throughout the country, and second, to understand the mood of labor migrants and employers, who were given the opportunity to formalize their labor relations and in the future work on a legal basis,” explained Artem Frolov, head of the department for permits to attract foreign labor of the FMS external labor migration department. According to him, it was possible to understand that the “mood” is quite positive, and therefore the FMS is now preparing proposals to extend such legalization to the entire territory of Russia.
The army of foreign workers grew by another 1,000 officially registered thanks to the introduction of the “one-stop shop” principle in October 2005. Moreover, as Boldarev believes, “this figure will grow exponentially.” “The documents required to obtain permission to attract and use foreign workers, work permits, and invitations to enter for the purpose of carrying out labor activities in Russia are submitted simultaneously,” he said. “Previously, processing these documents could take up to three or four months. Today, this period does not exceed one month. In addition, the number of interactions with FMS employees is significantly reduced, which consequently leads to a lower level of corruption.”
Finally, since January 2006, the FMS has been running a central database for recording foreign citizens who have crossed the Russian border. Despite the fact that this database, in the words of Sergei Boldarev, “has only just started to breathe,” the FMS hopes to use it to determine exactly how many foreigners are currently working in the country, to clarify the scale of the “shadow market” and data on economic damage from illegal workers. After all, those several thousand guest workers who “came out of the shadows” during the migration amnesty and the introduction of the “one-stop shop” principle are a drop in the ocean compared with the total number of illegal workers. According to Sergei Boldarev, by various estimates, the army of unregistered workers could be from 5 to 12 million people. In 2005, more than 750,000 foreigners received official work permits in Russia.
In addition, the FMS is now also preparing changes to legislation, primarily to the law “On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens.” For example, as Artem Frolov said, it is planned to include branches of foreign legal entities among Russian employers. This is expected to somewhat facilitate their recruitment of staff from abroad, since the procedure for processing the necessary documents will be simplified. In addition, it is proposed to increase the validity period of permits to stay in Russia “for the purpose of carrying out labor activity.” Currently, permits are issued for no more than one year, and if the amendments are adopted, one of the main documents of a law-abiding guest worker will be valid for four years.
However, replacing the existing permit procedure for hiring foreigners with a so-called notification procedure (which is what supporters of liberalizing migration policy insist on) is not planned in the near future. “Such an idea was voiced, but it did not reach a legislative decision,” said Sergei Boldarev.