“I’m from Moldova, married to a Muslim, I don’t know if our family will survive”: they are not leaving yet, but they are afraid

If the department has exclusive rights to import labor, then, of course, the beneficiaries will get rich.

Meanwhile, Tajik migrants are leaving for their homes. For now it’s temporary. Because they don’t know what to expect. It is the law-abiding people who are most afraid.

Their employers fear for themselves too. Who needs additional checks and denunciations?

Instead of normalizing the situation in the labor market, already suffering from a shortage of workers, it is actually being led to a dead end.

What opponents of any labor migration are thinking about is not very clear to me personally. Let’s kick out the Tajiks – then what?

Until today, there were only three ways to solve the personnel problem all over the world. And one of them is long-term and systemic. Improve the lives of our own citizens so that they want to give birth more.

The second is to modernize production, replacing people with robots. Also not about us yet. If only we can buy it cheaply from the Chinese on online platforms.

And the third is exactly the one that we are now essentially cutting down at the root. External migration. It is everywhere except North Korea and Afghanistan. But for some reason no one wants to go there.

Alas, the countries of the first world, where the birth rate due to the second demographic transition is not much better than ours, have long realized that the only solution is external migration.

And now the struggle is for quality in order to get the best. And we have?

If in the well-fed oil “noughties” Ukrainians or Belarusians who were close to us in mentality, qualifications, general level of education and Soviet past actually came here, now the migration policy, which is rocking like a ship in a storm, has left only immigrants from Central Asia. And from those, apparently, there will soon be no one left either.

I wonder, of course, why educated and civilized personnel are not rushing to join us?

The return of current migrants to their historical homeland is also a double-edged sword. Because there is no work there, and there are too many people. And this invariably, experts predict, will radicalize the next neighbors near us…

Will it turn out that we are sending guest workers, beggars, upset, offended, straight into the hands of the same recruiters who organized the terrorist attack in Crocus?

Including those who previously wanted to calmly and peacefully feed their family.

I talked to people from Central Asia living in the Moscow region to find out how their lives have changed. And what are they going to do next.

It is significant that all my interlocutors, as if by agreement, even asked not to mention their names in full.

Now many are shunning visitors from Central Asia, they are reluctant to even rent out hostels to them, and the owners of rented apartments are warning about the termination of contracts or a significant increase in risk fees (no one wants, if anything, to later turn out to be an accomplice of terrorists, simply because you rent out your real estate).

Here are just some of their monologues.

A., Moscow region, born in Tajikistan:

– I have a passport as a citizen of the Russian Federation, I have nothing to fear, I have been a citizen for more than a dozen years. But because of my appearance, even my employer, who knows me as a hard-working person, told me to stay at home for now and not go out again. I speak Russian well, I don’t have any problems with the police, but it’s still scary. Now I’m doing household chores, I have time to clean up, paint the kitchen, fix broken electrical appliances – I’m waiting for it to become calmer.

R.Zh., Moscow: – We ourselves are from Tajikistan, my son, and he has a Russian passport, the other day we were detained on the street, he was approaching the metro, getting ready to go home, coming from work. They were immediately sent to the unit. I’m afraid for him because I wanted him to finish college and just go to work, but that’s what happened. This whole situation has had a great impact on our family. I didn’t have time to say a single word to my son. I only know where he is, I’m going to visit him. I have placed my second son at home for now; I need an assistant. Now he is forced to leave his job, I won’t let him go anywhere. I don’t like it myself, but if anything happens, I’ll be left here alone. Why such a life?

M.D., Moscow region: – I am from Moldova, married to a Muslim. My husband immediately went home to Tajikistan, they didn’t take any risks, I’m afraid that he might be detained for no reason. And I am alone with a small child. Now I’m also going to my mother in Moldova to wait until everything calms down. We are ordinary people, but everyone is wary. This is a shame, we have lived in Russia for many years, we have always worked, we recently bought a plot of land, and my husband and relatives started construction. Now we have to give up everything, and we don’t know what will happen next and whether our family will survive.

S., Moscow: – It has become more difficult to get a job, especially if you have several part-time jobs. Many immediately went home, to Uzbekistan, to Tajikistan. I am from Tajikistan myself. I thought these were the places I could go to work. But employers don’t want me. They say we’ll wait until the locals come. And the locals – who will come? The salary at a construction site is low. They are not ready to pay more. If there is no money, I will also go home. They called me for a taxi, but the costs are high, and if they refuse to go because of my name, to whom and what will I prove, if I need to transfer money for a car in the evening or the deadline is in the morning? I’ll remain in the red. Now I live on what is left on my credit cards. Soon there will be no money to pay for them either.

Comment by Maria Arkhipova, human rights activist:

— As for the creation of a separate state-owned company for the import of migrants, many questions arise with it. If a state-owned company has a monopoly, then enterprises that need labor will become dependent, and this will immediately affect their work. Can lead to serious problems from downtime and losses to the worst-case scenario – closure. The second question is what to do with private individuals? Should all entry of migrants be transferred to a single government agency? How many people should work in it? What will the FSB border service do then, what will their role be? Are there any special lists of who is allowed to enter and who is prohibited? Such restrictions, as a rule, do not lead to good things, but lead to serious problems both in the economy and in the field of employment, and generally have a negative impact on people’s lives. Another question is that if an enterprise wants to bring in its own specialists for its enterprise, they must coordinate, wait, waste time, etc. If the economy is free, then restrictions on labor are impossible; one excludes the other. The benefits of this initiative are not yet clear. Moreover, the Federal Migration Service of Russia was already separated into a separate department, and as a result, it still became part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. Will there not be a duplication of powers and procedures here, and in the end everything will turn into a bureaucratic nightmare and chaos, in which corruption will begin to flourish, as well as various gray and black schemes for the clandestine import of migrants.