According to the Center for Human Demography and Ecology, currently about 5 million migrants are working illegally in Russia. The incessant flow of visitors creates fertile ground for corruption. Employers are accustomed to making deals with the police to turn a blind eye to unregistered workers. Migrant workers, in turn, consider it normal to bribe doctors for the necessary certificates for registration. Thus, on March 1, a medical professional was detained in Moscow on suspicion of selling certificates of absence of HIV infection. An employee of a dermatovenerological dispensary issued health certificates for migrant workers without even conducting tests. For this, she charged patients 1,500 rubles each.
The new law "On Migrants," which came into force on January 15, was intended to facilitate the legalization of visitors and reduce the scale of corruption. According to it, employers who have entered into an employment or civil law contract with a foreigner are required to notify the local branch of the Federal Migration Service within 10 days. Otherwise, they will have to pay a fine of 250,000 to 800,000 rubles for each illegal worker. At the same time, the procedure for obtaining permission to stay in Russia and to get a job is significantly simplified.
“Previously, the migrant was completely at the mercy of the employer, as he first had to find a job and then register,” said Svetlana Gannushina, chairwoman of the committee ‘For Civil Rights.’ “Now the approach to registration has fundamentally changed. The worker is no longer tied to the employer. He goes to the Federal Migration Service, obtains a work permit, and then uses it to find a job.”
However, the simplification of the registration system has not yet yielded visible results. Experts attribute this to employers' unwillingness to pay official salaries to migrant workers. “Huge queues are now forming at the FMS of those wishing to obtain a work permit,” Svetlana Gannushkina told Novye Izvestia. “But a paradoxical situation arises. The employer is also obliged to immediately report that a migrant is working for him. So, for 5,000 work cards issued to migrants, only 500 notifications come from employers. 4,500 people simply disappear in an unknown direction. All this indicates that they are employed in the shadow economy.”
Experts admit that it is too early to draw final conclusions about the effectiveness of the law. But if the situation continues to develop in the same way, the results of its work will be extremely low. “Legalization will proceed more actively if employers are actually fined for non-compliance with legalization rules,” said Nikita Mkrtchyan, chief migration specialist at the Russian Center for Human Demography and Ecology. “For example, I know that recently one entrepreneur was fined 450,000 rubles. He was simply shocked and immediately registered all workers. Only when real fines are imposed on entrepreneurs will the fight against illegal migrants yield tangible results.”
However, Nikita Mkrtchyan explained that he does not expect sensational results from the new legislation yet. He clarified that currently every tenth migrant is illegal. If at least half of them are legalized, that would already be a great success.
Nina VAZHDAEVA.
Novye Izvestia