Migration, repatriation, war, crime and the economy hang in the balance

I have a lot of experience in this area. For the second convocation in a row, the State Duma has elected me as its special representative on migration and citizenship. Upon returning in November with the Duma delegation from a business trip to Tajikistan, I had to make a statement: “It is unacceptable, under the impression of individual excesses, to scare Russians with Tajiks, and Tajiks with Russians. Crime among migrants, like crime in general, has no justification. We need to fight it. Understanding at the same time that labor migration should be a tool of socio-economic development, and not a problem of both Russia and Tajikistan. At the moment there is no alternative to this.”

I said this not because I don’t know that among the million Tajiks working in Russia there are criminals and drug couriers. And not even because the branches of Radio Liberty, which bear the name “Radio Asia” in Central Asia, tell here in pure Tajik that everyone who is going to work in Russia will be baptized and sent to the front. He said because he visited the new Russian school named after. Gagarin, built in Dushanbe by V.V. Putin, four hundred meters from the US Embassy, ​​which hosts Radio Asia. There is a competition for 600 children per place (mostly Tajiks, because there are only 38 thousand Russians in Tajikistan). He said because Bishop Pavel of Yeisk and Timashevsky, who travels from the Krasnodar Territory every two weeks to concurrently fulfill the duties of Bishop of Dushanbe and Tajikistan, showed me a video about an orphanage and the only cafe in the abandoned mining village of Shurab, whose owner, a Tajik guy, feeds children and adults are free if they read a Russian book from the library in a cafe.

It would seem that no matter how you re-read, test your teeth, or shine a laser on my statement “for all the good against all the bad,” it should not give rise to hysteria. This was not the case, because there is the Internet. A certain Maria S., whose opinion about “kishlak people” whose “brains turn off” was immediately replicated, pours out all her hatred towards the Tajiks “who will seize and subjugate Russian cities.” With my active participation, of course.

Further more. As soon as I mentioned the Ministry of Labor’s figures (there are 72 million employed people in Russia, including 3 million migrant workers), the province immediately started writing that my cherished and, apparently, paid for dream was to drag another 2 million Central Asians to Russia to fill the available vacancies. It’s okay that I don’t have such plans or capabilities. The school of Internet slander has already been divided into those who believe that I do not decide anything, and those who are sure that I am responsible for everything that has happened to the CIS, Ukraine and migration since 1991.

Let’s figure it out, dears. For years in the Duma and in our Institute of CIS Countries, when neither the Internet nor its heroes existed, we fought for Russians in the near abroad, for the return of compatriots to their homeland, for Crimea and Sevastopol. The deportations also made enemies among the elites of the new independent states and in Russia itself. But they didn’t “change their shoes,” changing their opinion depending on the situation in the Kremlin. I will quote a fresh excerpt from the official report of the special representative of the State Duma (i.e., mine) based on the results of business trips last month to our border and front-line regions: “The conflict with Ukraine, which has become Russia’s main test since the collapse of the Soviet Union, requires special attention to issues of migration and repatriation and affects the entire migration process. It can be imagined as Russia’s struggle for people, for hands and heads throughout the former Soviet space and throughout the world.

In Russia, society is split into supporters and opponents of migration, especially from Central Asia and the Caucasus. One can understand the concern about crime and signs of enclavization. Especially in Moscow and the Moscow region. We must welcome the desire to reduce dependence on labor from abroad through increased labor productivity and the ability to produce everything with one’s own hands, relying on the internal labor resources of the Russian Federation. It is impossible to justify demagoguery, a surge of xenophobia and a refusal to take any account of reality in the economy and international situation of the belligerent Russian Federation.”

I would like us to produce smartphones ourselves. So that there is no need to trade oil and gas at a discount. So that all Russian families, like my mother’s family, have 12 children. And we would get by at the construction site, in the countryside, and in the yard solely with our labor. I want to believe that this will happen. Some day. But today, based on the results of my trips, the most memorable was the information from the Governor of the Kursk Region, Roman Starovoit, that a study conducted on his initiative showed: if current demographic trends continue, in 100 years from the current 1 million inhabitants of the region, in a positive scenario, 220 thousand people will remain , and if negative – 100 people.

The defense industry, out of necessity, is pulling workers out of civilian industries. The Russian leadership is making great efforts to keep our closest neighbors around Moscow, whose capitals have long been visited by the competitors of the CIS, the Eurasian Union and the CSTO with their little cakes, cookies and integration temptations. At this very time, beautiful-hearted patriots of Russia are demanding to close borders, cancel treaties, and introduce a visa regime with the remaining neighboring countries in order to bring any reasonable requirements for migration to the point of absurdity. The mail and portfolio of the Committee on CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots, which is specialized in the State Duma for migration affairs, are oversaturated with proposals to reissue essentially serfdom in relation to foreign workers (a ban on leaving one employer in Russia for another under pain of deportation), the establishment of a circular bail for an offense (deportation of the entire family) and the establishment of a two-year qualification for marriage with a citizen of Russia for a foreigner to obtain, not citizenship, but a residence permit in Russia. Happy marriage, isn’t it?

Probably, Maria S. and everyone who decided to make a name for themselves on the wave of migrant phobia will like this, but I know where this will lead. To the collapse of the Eurasian Union, the abandonment of Russia’s zone of influence in the near abroad, and the rejection from us of those who could be useful to us in this difficult transition period. Tell me, please, who will you fill the jobs with? Do you think the Vietnamese, Chinese and North Koreans will come to us and be better? Won’t they have their own problems?

The Gospel of Matthew says: “In everything that you would have people do to you, do so to them, for this is the law and the prophets.”

Should we fight illegal migration? Undoubtedly. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 650 thousand foreigners work in the shadows in Russia, that is, approximately 4% of the 14 million illegal workers. Is it necessary to burn out crime with a hot iron? Certainly. In the country as a whole, 4% of crimes are committed by foreigners (this figure would be half as much if it were not for Moscow and the Moscow region, which attract 48% of all migrants). The problem of drug trafficking is especially acute. But, honestly, are you sure that migrants are able to smuggle all the drugs into Russia in the tails of their dressing gowns? Do they have accomplices among representatives of the indigenous peoples of Russia, including the state-forming people? So how should we prioritize our efforts?

Now we’ve reached the main point. “To the doctor, heal yourself.” We, the state and society, are ourselves to blame for the rising wave of xenophobia. We painfully come to the understanding that the main national issue in Russia is Russian. This is exactly what I spoke about on December 4 at the Parliamentary hearings on national policy in the State Duma. Before the 2020 amendments, there were no mentions of Russian people (except for the Russian language) in the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Since 1999, we have had a basic law “On State Policy towards Compatriots Abroad,” and since 2020, according to my proposal, there has been a constitutional obligation to support Russian compatriots. But you will not find “compatriots” in the new law “On Citizenship”. As well as complete certainty about who belongs to them and who does not. As a result, the governor of the Kaluga region stops the implementation of the State program on his territory to promote the voluntary resettlement of compatriots from abroad, because, as it turned out, 63% of those who received citizenship under it are citizens of Tajikistan.

In his Decree of November 22, 2023, the President of Russia approved the need for repatriation, that is, returning to the homeland, recognizing this right for compatriots, that is, for those who themselves or whose ancestors in a direct ascending line were born or lived within the borders of the Russian Federation. Having introduced my bill “On repatriation to the Russian Federation” in 2021, I am sure that neither the Tajiks I respect nor the other peoples of Central Asia and Transcaucasia are compatriots of the Russian Federation in our time. They are Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Tatars, Chechens, Circassians, Ossetians and others, that is, peoples tied to modern Russia by blood and territory. My bill on this matter remains in the State Duma without consideration.

We need, like Odysseus, to carefully and without unnecessary losses pass between the Scylla of migrant phobia and the Charybdis of confusion on the national issue. In our country, all the work on migration and repatriation is assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and is financed in the state budget under the “Fight against Crime” section. Whatever you call the ship, that’s how it will sail. With all due respect to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, we cannot delay any longer with the creation of a responsible Ministry for Migration (and Repatriation), capable of comprehensively directing the migration process, turning it from a problem in Russia into an instrument of socio-economic development.

I think we will talk about this in February at the Parliamentary hearings proposed by our committee in the State Duma.