Past the quota

Russian regions have reached the limit on guest workers

Pessimistic forecasts that the labor force quota set by the Russian government in 2008 would not be enough seemed to have come true by May. As the Federal Migration Service reported yesterday, a number of regions of the country have already faced the consequences of their miscalculations in determining the number of guest workers they need: already in May, on the eve of the summer, which marks a surge in seasonal migration, they have exhausted their ability to attract foreigners to work. This indicates that the quota of 2 million foreign workers established for 2008 will not be enough to meet the needs of the labor market, as scientists and representatives of the business community warned officials about at the end of 2007.

As the FMS press service told Vremya Novostey, several regions have already completely exhausted the provided quotas: Primorye, Murmansk region, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Transbaikalia, Khabarovsk Territory and the Jewish Autonomous Region, and the Kaluga, Ivanovo regions and Perm Territory “already on the way.” No more work permits will be issued to the main consumer of foreign labor - Moscow.

Let us remind you that, when determining the number of labor migrants our country needs this year, the government was guided by rather strange calculations. Thus, in 2007, a limit was set for 6 million guest workers, and, as government experts assured, it was not completely exhausted - about 2.3 million people applied for work permits to the FMS. When the White House “collegially” decided how many migrants could be recruited to work this year, they decided to focus on this figure: they set a quota of 2 million and set aside a reserve of 30% of this figure.

However, the mass legalization of guest workers, which the heads of the Federal Migration Service joyfully reported on throughout the year, continues at a pace that clearly outstrips the mathematical abilities of officials. And it quickly became clear that two and a half million foreign workers would not be able to satisfy the demands of employers. The head of the FMS, Konstantin Romodanovsky, admitted at the beginning of the year that “the quota can and should be increased,” and also announced that the service is working on developing a more flexible quota system that would allow regions to send their applications at least twice a year , not one. However, no amendments were submitted to the previous cabinet for consideration. Yesterday, the Federal Migration Service told Vremya Novostey that now they will not be able to help the regions that have miscalculated. “We technically can no longer attract foreigners to work. In these regions, we turn off printers and stop printing work permits,” explained a representative of the press service of the migration department.

Representatives of the business community, most interested in migrant labor, already at the end of last year came out with rather sharp criticism of the reduction of quotas by almost three times. Entrepreneurs, in particular, were concerned that the owners of small firms would not be able to prove that they needed migrant labor, unlike the owners of large supermarkets or large construction companies. “I don’t see anything good in this. When it is said that all this is being done in the interests of Russians, it does not look very convincing. Restricting labor migration is an obvious blow to small businesses,” Vladlen Maksimov, a leading expert at the all-Russian organization of small and medium-sized businesses “Support of Russia,” told Vremya Novostey.

Scientists also warned against sharp reductions in quotas. “I can’t even guess where such a low quota came from,” Zhanna Zayonchkovskaya, head of the migration laboratory at the Institute of National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vremya Novostey. “Maybe they want to encourage the regions to submit more applications.” According to her, monitoring of the migration market showed that in addition to the 2 million foreign workers who received labor cards, about 15% of this number are today working without a work permit, and “it’s hard to even imagine how many are hiding in basements.” “In our country there are simply no tools that allow us to determine the adequacy of the quota, because there is a huge shadow sector in the labor market, which is absolutely unstudied and incomprehensible, but you need to know a real photograph,” says Ms. Zayonchkovskaya.

Kirill MELNIKOV