DUSHANBE, January 5, 2009, Asia-Plus — Russia has introduced a new system of organized recruitment of labor migrants from Tajikistan.
Russia’s news agency Interfax quoted Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) head Konstantin Romodanovsky as saying, “The first trial arrival of labor migrants in Russia through Samara under the new system will be held in the near future.” According to him, the new system is based on “a state-private partnership.”
According to FMS, considerable outflow of migrant workers from Russian was to be observed in late December. The FMS specialists attributed it to the New Year holidays; however compared to the previous two years the number of migrant workers leaving Russia has increased significantly, the FMS spokesman Konstantin Poltoranin was cited as saying.
According to Poltoranin, national migration services in the CIS states have also confirmed increase in the number of their nationals leaving the Russian Federation.
In 2008, FMS allotted a quota of 2 million migrant workers, which is three times fewer than in 2007, when the quota of six million labor migrants was allotted. Last year, labor migrants were fined a total of more than 6 billion Russian rubles (RR) for violation of the Russian migration legislation.
We will recall that Russia has reduced quotas on foreign workers for this year. Russia’s news agency Itar-Tass reported last month that Quotas for foreign labor in Russian regions in 2009 will be reduced by 800,000 people to 1.9 million, which is half of the initial quota of 2.7 million. Deputy Minister of Health and Social Development Maxim Topilin was quoted as saying that this would not lead to a “serious worsening” of the situation. “The Ministry of Health and Social Development has been allowed to reduce the quota upon receipt of certain signals from regions. And the situation has changed of course. For example, we look at a request for quota cuts from Chelyabinsk and understand that this is a result of cutting jobs that were initially intended for foreigners,” he told Ekho Moskvy radio. According to the deputy minister, the total share of foreign workers employed in Russia’s construction sector is about 20 percent. “The quota for next year has been determined. You know that a decision has been made to somewhat reduce it. It was set at almost four million people,” he said.
International experts said the cut in the immigration quota would affect mostly Russia’s weaker neighboring states such as Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, which often have up to 10 percent of their work-age citizens residing in Russia. The economies of all three countries considerably depend on remittances. According to Central Asia-Caucasus Institute (CACI), Analyst, although Tajikistan is not among the poorest countries in the world, it is the fourth biggest recipient of remittances per capita.
