“Don’t humiliate us”: the wives of migrant workers called on Russians to come to their senses

The tragedy of March 22 gave rise to “déjà vu,” which today seems to everyone who has lived in Russia for the last quarter of a century: searches, raids, signals, restrictions and obvious tension towards persons of a certain nationality. The more pressure and suspicion, the more acutely a person, guilty only of his origin, faces the question – how to react? To make excuses, to be offended, or, as it is contemptuously called in slang, to “grab” – to remain silent and streamline?

Individuals who are today considered “suspicious” only on the basis of their nationality are asking Russians “not to play with fire.”

Today, the nationality of detained terrorists has once again focused the attention of Russians on guests from neighboring countries, and it is not “persons of a particular nationality” who are targeted, but all Central Asian diasporas, and they are the most numerous in the Russian Federation (according to approximate data, today in the Russian Federation there are about 7-10 million migrants with different legal status).

Officials supported the idea that the Crocus tragedy is nothing more than “a shocking manifestation of weak control over migration processes,” and came up with their own ideas on how to strengthen it. The Ministry of Digital Development, for example, proposed monitoring migrants using a digital profile, which would reflect all movements of representatives of the foreign workforce, as well as the validity period of their permits. The Ministry of Labor has put forward a draft law prohibiting foreign citizens from working in the Russian Federation for more than two years under one employment contract. And turn the employment of migrants into an organized “targeted” recruitment, which will be managed by a special department.

The Moscow Department of Transport has proposed equipping the bicycles of couriers, which migrant workers like to use, with license plates, which will make it possible to identify them on traffic cameras.

The law enforcement agencies remembered the local abuses inevitable with the influx of guest workers – in just a week it became clear that in the migration centers of the Russian Federation they are selling certificates of passing the Russian language exam with might and main (in St. Petersburg, the monthly income of false examiners is estimated at 7 million rubles).

And the false registration of Central Asian labor migrants was provided by a whole gang, which included not only werewolves in uniform and “rubber” landlords, but even employees of the Russian language center. In the Moscow region alone, this multi-disciplinary organized crime group fictitiously registered 1,500 illegal immigrants from “close” foreigners in less than a year – for impressive fees, of course. In places of “compact employment” of migrant workers, such as construction sites, warehouses and store chains, there are massive checks of compliance with migration laws, as a result of which workers with expired documents are sent to Sakharovo for legal work patents and residence permits, and unscrupulous employers who hired illegal immigrants are brought to justice liability (for illegally hiring a foreigner and providing him with housing, a fine from 500 thousand to 1 million rubles).

In the week after Crocus, 784 cases of violation of migration laws were heard in the capital’s courts, hundreds of migrants were shown the door, both from work and from Russia.

“They are packing their bags,” they report locally, as if this is the main purpose of the checks. The concerned public did not stand aside, taking personal control on the ground – in courtyards, schools, shops, etc. Hence the “déjà vu”: not for the first time in our memory, individual citizens began to analyze the moral character of the labor migrants “closest” to them – their housemates, their child’s classmates.

“Today I got on the bus with my five-year-old daughter,” shares Adalat from the Uzbek Andijan, living with her family in New Moscow, “and I remembered my mother’s story about how she was insulted in transport 20 years ago. – But she had just moved to Russia, she was afraid to answer, and I have been living here since I was 5 years old, my daughter was born in Russia, I cannot remain silent when some aunt hisses at me in the back: “Go home.” Although all our elders and imams (elders and clergy) ask not to react. I just quietly answered: “I’m a Russian, just like you, I can show you my passport.” But then there was such a hubbub that we “bought” documents that I had to go out so that the child would not hear.

According to migrants, many of them went home themselves, without waiting for “expulsion”, which many now wish for at almost every step, since working in the Russian Federation, taking into account the ruble exchange rate, tightening and attitudes, ceases to be profitable.

“I’d rather go to Turkey or South Korea,” says Tajik Jaihun from Uzbek Samarkand. – I can also go to Afghanistan, they offer profitable work there in the border region. Although not particularly legal.

It is the last of what has been said, in the opinion of the wives of labor migrants themselves, that should alert the Russian authorities the most.

“It’s hard for us now,” the wife of a Tajik who runs a teahouse in New Moscow admits on condition of anonymity. – Not only because of hostility, but your people began to bypass any Central Asian business – the shawarma teahouses are empty, my sister was fired as a housekeeper, my neighbor was fired from the store, although she was just cleaning there. And since there is no place for us here, no income, we are going home. But there are no tickets, apparently we’re not the only ones. We live in Uzbekistan, but now none of our friends can fly there, everything has been bought up by our departing people. Although in your news they called it “an increase in demand among Russians for vacations in Central Asia.” But all this is unimportant in comparison with the fact that in the chats of our husbands who are offended by Russia they are already beginning to recruit for “lucrative, but not entirely legal work on the border with Afghanistan.” And there is a hotbed of evil, which not only Russians, but also all normal people in the world fear most of all. Don’t play with fire by humiliating our people who just work for you, otherwise our husbands will go there.