Citing the president of the Migrants’ Federation of Russia Vadim Kozhenov, Fergana news agency reported on October 11 that Russia has lifted re-entry ban for 300,000 migrants from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
According to Fergana news agency, reentry ban has been lifted only for migrants, who were deported from Russia by the interior ministry’ decision.
Meanwhile, entry into the Russia Federation for country for migrants, who were deported by court decision, remains closed for the period set by the judicial authorities.
According to Kozhenov, names of migrants who were permitted to re-enter the Russian Federation have been deleted from the Interior Ministry’s database on August 18.
Over the first six months of this year, around 99,000 foreign citizens have reportedly been denied entry to Russia.
According to data provided by the chief of the Russian Interior Ministry Main Directorate for Migration Issues Valentina Kazakova, about 7 million migrants have been registered in the Russian Federation as of October 1 this year.
During his first official visit to Russia in 12 years, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon in April 2019 raised the issue of revoking travel bans slapped on hundreds of thousands of aspiring labor migrants at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, and the Russian president reportedly instructed the Interior Ministry to begin addressing the issue.
Under a 2017 agreement, a travel ban imposed on around 100,000 Tajik nationals who had been deported from Russia was lifted.
The deportations are typically triggered by violations of migration law. Exclusion orders can vary between a few months to a decade, depending on the type of offense that triggered deportation.
Prior to the 2017 agreement, around 400,000 Tajik nationals were barred from entering Russia.
Labor migration to the Russian Federation has become a phenomenon unprecedented in scale and importance to the Tajik economy, on the national as well as household levels, having made invaluable contributions to the country’s development and helping reduce poverty significantly in the country. On the other hand, labor migration has also created strong dependencies, with whole families relying entirely on income earned abroad by migrant family members. Most of the remittances are spent on household consumption, while income-generating investments are rare. Seasonal labor migration has become and will most likely continue to be the most appealing employment option for Tajik men because of the weak Tajik economy. Meanwhile, many Tajik migrants stay and work in Russia without proper documentation. As one measure to control and limit irregular migration, Russian authorities are tightening law enforcement in the sphere of migration, including by widening the grounds for issuing reentry bans to foreign nationals who have repeatedly breached Russian laws and administrative regulations.
Varying in duration from three to five years, these reentry bans have led to a growing category of involuntary returnees who lack economic prospects in their home countries and who wait desperately for their chance to go back to Russia.
More than two thirds of the migrant workers have reportedly migrated to the Russian Federation due to the lack of jobs and the low salaries in Tajikistan, and therefore, the reentry ban to the Russian Federation has led to a significant deterioration of their and their families’ economic situation.
