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Vice-Premier Alexander Zhukov is sure that the measures to make migration orderly and to control foreign labour are necessary and will help put everything right. “Lack of proper order is harmful to everybody, including the foreign labourers, our own citizens, and our economy,” Zhukov told reporters on Thursday during an interval in the work of the Russian cabinet
Experts have calculated that there are now seven to twelve million illegal immigrants from the nearby countries in Russia, the vice-premier stated.
Illegal migration engenders a situation when foreign workers, illegally employed at different construction sites, are being turned into the most unprotected section of the labour force, Zhukov noted.
“They are the most rightless people,” he added. “They are paid money in so-called envelopes and pay no taxes. Foreigners are known to work in the most inhuman conditions, actually like simple slaves. This situation is abnormal,” Zhukov stressed.
The injunction, which Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed on Wednesday, fixes the 2007 quota for foreign workers at six millions. They will be allowed to come to Russia from CIS countries without any visas, Zhukov reminded.
The cabinet has also decided that 308 thousand people, requiring visas, could be given employment in Russia next year.
On the whole, the vice-premier stressed, “the endorsed set of measures will help form a market of foreign manpower”. “We want to make this market transparent and to bring it in line with the Russian legislation,” Zhukov stressed.
The Federal Migration Service will bear priority responsibility for the execution of those measures, he added. “I am sure that they have long since become imminent and necessary,” Zhukov noted.
“The rules have been facilitated, as well as the procedure of getting employment by foreigners, while sanctions for the illegal use of foreign labourers were toughened. The state is now beginning to control the market, to determine the sectors of economy, where extra manpower is needed,” he stated.
“All those measures meet both the Russian interests and those of the foreign workers themselves,” the vice-premier concluded.
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