Sergei Mironov, the leader of the A Just Russia – For the Truth political party, proposes to impose temporary visa requirements for citizens of the Central Asian countries in order to protect Russia’s economy against cheap labor and reduce the likelihood of importing new COVID-19 strains.
“I consider it necessary to temporarily impose visa requirements for Central Asia’s nations in order to protect Russian workers from dumping in the labor market and reduce the likelihood of importing new strains of the novel coronavirus into the country,” says a statement posted on the party leader’s ’s official website.
According to him, the labor migration has become a destabilizing crime factor.
“The third and the main reason is to protect our economy against cheap labor, which slows down its development. The cheap labor corrupts business, allowing it to save on wage increases, retraining workers and upgrading equipment,” A Just Russia – For the Truth party leader stressed.
According data from the Ministry of Labor, Migration and Employment of the Population of Tajikistan (MoLMEP), 331,353 Tajik nationals have traveled to Russia seeking better employment opportunities over the first ten months of this year, which is reportedly 2.8 times more than for the whole of 2020. Tajik national primarily travel to Irkutsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Moscow, St Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad oblasts.
Meanwhile, Russian migration authorities says more than 1 million Tajiks are currently working as labor migrants in the Russian Federation.
According to data from the Central Bank of Russia, 752.4 million U.S. dollars have been sent from Russia to Tajikistan trough money transfer systems over the first six months of this year, which is 10.8 percent more than in the same period last year.
