| “Non-indigenous” traders will pay for the conflict with Georgia In the course of the growing confrontation with Georgia, Russia is discovering so many problems and violations on its own territory that it is apparently embarking on a new priority project. In order to ensure security, fight crime and protect domestic agricultural producers, the authorities intend to urgently tighten immigration legislation and carry out a nationwide purge of markets from the dominance of “non-indigenous” traders. Yesterday, the activities of officials, deputies and security officials in this direction were sanctioned by President Vladimir Putin.
Having criticized regional authorities and law enforcement agencies at a meeting on the implementation of national projects for inaction, which led, among other things, to mass unrest in Kondopoga, the head of state demanded to tighten the rules for the participation of foreigners in labor and trade activities in our country. The government has been instructed to adopt by November 15 the necessary regulations for this, including a document on quotas for foreign labor not only by profession, specialty, but also by country of origin. And the police and other inspection bodies, in fact, received carte blanche to “regulate” the number of foreigners in the wholesale and retail markets “in order to protect the interests of Russian producers and the indigenous population.” “I admit that to resolve these problems, not everything has been settled legislatively, but I assure you that within the framework of the current legislation, the government of Russia, the leadership of the constituent entities of the Federation, and local government bodies, as well as numerous inspection bodies, together can and are obliged to establish proper order,” Putin said.
It is likely that guest workers will never experience the widely publicized liberalization of migration policy, which is promised by the entry into force of amendments to a number of laws regulating the stay of foreigners in Russia on January 15, 2007. They envisaged a simplified procedure for legalization in our country for CIS citizens entitled to visa-free entry, including the abolition of regional quotas for attracting labor. The exceptions did not apply only to Georgia and Turkmenistan, with which Russia has a visa regime. But today the question of abolishing quotas for former compatriots no longer seems so clear-cut, and the quota for Georgian guest workers may be eliminated altogether. Deputy Director of the Federal Migration Service Mikhail Tyurkin said yesterday that Russia does not need workers from Georgia. The leaders of the Federal Migration Service have already managed to quickly analyze the situation and found out that “the jobs that Georgian citizens are applying for are not in demand in Russian regions.” “We have no need for Georgians to work, the same applies to residence, since these concepts are interconnected,” said Mr. Tyurkin.
Answering a question from a Vremya Novostei journalist, the deputy head of the FMS assured that “there is no persecution of migrants based on nationality,” and recommended not linking the actions of the migration service with political differences between Russia and Georgia. According to him, the tightening of conditions for foreign citizens to stay on the territory of our country will affect all citizens of the CIS countries and non-CIS countries. In particular, it is proposed to halve the period of permanent stay in Russia on a multiple-entry annual visa to 90 days for everyone.
However, demonstrating that today foreigners constantly violate Russian laws, Mr. Tyurkin constantly cited examples concerning Georgians. “According to our statistics, in the first six months of 2006, 79 thousand Georgian citizens entered the territory of Russia, and only 29 thousand of them were registered with the FMS,” Mr. Tyurkin said. According to him, in the last week alone, the courts have made decisions on the administrative expulsion of 480 Georgian citizens from Russian territory. “On the visa, as a rule, they have one purpose of stay, for example, study, but in reality it turns out that he is trading in the market,” he said. In parallel, the FMS intends to close the “back entrances” to Russia from the territory of neighboring countries that do not have a visa regime with Georgia. “We intend to work out the issue with our Belarusian colleagues about the visa-free stay of Georgian citizens on the territory of the republic,” said the deputy head of the FMS.
The authorities’ intention to eliminate Georgian employment quotas, and, perhaps, to revise the liberal amendments to the laws “On Migration Registration of Foreign Citizens and Stateless Persons in the Russian Federation” and “On the Legal Status of Foreign Citizens in Russia” that have not yet come into force have already led to human rights activists are perplexed. “I still hope that the issue of quotas will not concern citizens of those CIS countries with which we have a visa-free regime,” Svetlana Ganushkina, head of the organization “Migration and Law,” told Vremya Novostey. - Otherwise, this means that the executive branch completely ignores and tramples the decisions of the legislative branch. The law has not yet come into force, but they are starting to radically rewrite it.” Ms. Gannushkina called the abolition of the Georgian quota and the likely persecution of refugees from this country living in Russia “simply immoral.” “Russian passports are being freely distributed to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, while Georgians, who fled from there in the early 90s and have been living in our country for a long time, are deliberately pushed by the authorities onto the illegal path,” she stated.
Accusations of revising a law that has not yet entered into force do not seem to worry the migration service too much, since there is a “loophole” left in the document that allows migration workers to act more harshly. As Zhunus Dzhakupov, head of the legal department of the Federal Migration Service, explained to Vremya Novostey, the law provides that “the government, depending on economic, demographic and political reasons, as well as based on national security interests, can introduce quotas for migrants.”
New initiatives by the authorities raise a lot of questions to which they themselves must give clear and civilized answers. For example, if we are talking about “foreign workers,” then what does this have to do with, say, Dagestanis or Chechens who trade in the market or own restaurants? If we talk about the “indigenous population,” then does this concept include, for example, Georgians who were already born in Russia? And so on. So far, at least one thing is clear: we do not have a consistent and understandable migration policy. It is possible, of course, that the steps announced by the Russian authorities in recent days mean an attempt to seize the initiative on issues on which radical nationalists have long been speculating, especially now, after Kondopoga. However, the “interception” (especially considering how all this can be implemented in practice) risks only increasing the popularity of the notorious slogan “Russia for Russians.” And the fact that he will strengthen the power position of the security forces is, perhaps, already obvious. Yulia KHOMCHENKO, Oleg VOLKOV |
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