News 18:00 April 11, 2017

FSB Director A. Bortnikov: Migrant workers are beginning to form the main backbone of terrorist groups in Russia

Migrant workers are beginning to form the main backbone of terrorist groups in Russia. FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov stated this at a meeting of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee. According to him, we are talking about CIS citizens, some of them were trained and participated in hostilities in Syria and Iraq.

Bortnikov proposes increasing the responsibility of officials who monitor compliance with migration legislation, as well as business structures that use migrant labor. At the same time, Bortnikov admitted that the operational work of the special services in Russia does not fully correspond to the threat of terrorism. First of all, this was shown by the latest terrorist attack in St. Petersburg.

Russia may return to discussing the issue of visas for labor migrants from the former Soviet republics in order to prevent the terrorist threat. This was not ruled out by the first deputy chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Defense and Security, Franz Klintsevich, on the air of the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

This is how he commented on the statement of FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov that migrants form the main backbone of terrorist groups in Russia.

“International treaties do not allow the introduction of visas today. We will destroy very serious connections. But the situation is such that, one way or another, we can return to some discussion of this issue, because Russia will be forced to protect its people and territory from this evil,” noted F. Klintsevich.

According to the senator, interstate agreements with post-Soviet republics give “many freedoms” to everyone who wants to come to Russia, however, “not finding work, these people can do the wrong things.” “Practice shows that due to social problems, poor living conditions and certain existing stereotypes, including religious ones, they become targets of recruitment and members of terrorist organizations,” F. Klintsevich clarified. In addition, the senator emphasized that there are problems with migrants who are not registered. “If they have the opportunity to receive money, they have contact with law enforcement agencies without any registration and go about their business, including those that the FSB director spoke about. Therefore, this is a very serious target for terrorist recruitment,” concluded F. Klintsevich.

Russia's open borders with the CIS countries increase the risk of terrorists infiltrating not only into the territory of our country, but also into other countries, says deputy member of the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations. Director of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Zorin.

In his opinion, as a result of the reorganization and transfer of functions of the migration service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, issues of adaptation and social integration of migrants faded into the background.

Svetlana Gannushkina, Chairman of the Committee for Civil Assistance in Assistance to Refugees and Migrants, considers the statement of the head of the FSB to be a lie.

According to Gannushkina, this possible fight against migrants will lead to labor going into the shadows.

Entry restrictions, the introduction of a visa regime with CIS countries and a decrease in the number of people from Central Asia in Russia will lead to serious problems in the Russian economy, says economist Sergei Aleksashenko.

According to Aleksashenko, people will feel these negative impacts in the economy immediately.

The proposal by the head of the FSB to strengthen control over migration legislation is not the first such initiative by the authorities. About how in recent years Russian officials have tried to regulate the flow of guest workers from the CIS countries.

How many labor migrants permanently live and work in Russia is not known for certain. Data from Rosstat and the Federal Migration Service often disagree with expert estimates. In addition, illegal migrant workers in general are not so easy to count. About seven million people, both legal and illegal, are data from the Higher School of Economics for 2013. The estimate of the Federal Migration Service for the same period is twice as modest. Officials talked about three and a half million for the whole of Russia. The latest statistics are very approximate. As for the regions that visitors choose, this is expectedly the capital and its surroundings, as well as St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, and, in addition, Yekaterinburg, Samara and the Krasnodar Territory. Among the countries supplying labor migrants, the leaders remain Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as Azerbaijan and Moldova. Ukrainians began to come a little less.

However, four years ago, the Moscow authorities, as well as the capital’s police and migration service, saw migrant workers from Vietnam as a serious threat. After security forces discovered clandestine sewing workshops in one of the industrial zones in the east of the city, the migrant workers were placed in a tent camp, located nearby, in the Golyanovo district. Human rights activists, as the BBC recalls, then complained about unsanitary conditions and inhumane treatment of the Vietnamese. As a result, the camp was closed, and most of the migrant workers were deported to their homeland. The Ministry of Internal Affairs then reported that they had opened a case against a certain criminal group of immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Vietnam and Azerbaijan, who, according to investigators, organized illegal migration.

In the same year, 2013, in the south of the capital, the Biryulyovskaya vegetable warehouse was temporarily closed. This happened after riots and pogroms on ethnic grounds. The reason was the murder of a local resident by a migrant from Azerbaijan. They conducted an inspection at the vegetable warehouse and detained more than two hundred illegal migrant workers. Criminal cases were also opened against the alleged organizers of the business.

From time to time, the authorities also resort to legislative methods to limit illegal migration - for example, they increase fines for employers and for visitors themselves. Two years ago, by the way, they were required to take a comprehensive exam in the Russian language, Russian history and the basics of legislation. The procedure, by the way, is not free - you will have to pay about five thousand rubles: comparable to the price of a labor patent.

The main industries in which migrants coming to Russia are employed are construction, housing and communal services, and public catering.

FSB Director A. Bortnikov: Migrant workers are beginning to form the main backbone of terrorist groups in Russia - News - Echo of Moscow, 04/11/2017