Someone has to work – Newspaper Kommersant No. 220 (7421) dated 11/28/2022

The government submitted to the State Duma a draft law on the reorganization of migration registration. It expands the use of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the services of the departmental Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Passport and Visa Service” and the specialized Moscow “migration” MFC for processing documents for labor migrants and registering citizens at the place of residence. It is assumed that this will simplify the provision of public services and relieve part of the load from the ministry – earlier its head Vladimir Kolokoltsev explained the distrust of citizens in the migration department of the department with low salaries and staff shortages. The reorganization will primarily affect the entry of migrants from visa-free countries for work (about 1.5 million per year) – the White House intends in this way to compensate for the shortage in the labor market caused by the mobilization and reduction in the entry of workers from visa-free countries.

Government bill No. 242428-8 with amendments to the documents regulating migration registration in the Russian Federation was registered by the State Duma on November 25. The essence of the amendments to the law on migration registration, relevant government decrees and departmental documents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs lies in the actual transfer of the “bureaucratic” component of registration of such registration to the departmental Federal State Unitary Enterprise Passport and Visa Service (FSUE PVS; operates in 67 regions) and the regional structures authorized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who are already working with the ministry in the area of ​​registration of labor migrants coming to work in the Russian Federation.

Amendments to the legislation should allow the transfer of a wide range of functions of the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the PVS and regional organizations – from accepting applications for visas, invitations, temporary residence permits, issuing or replacing residence permits, work permits, reissuing patents for foreigners, passports of citizens of the Russian Federation , including photographing and conducting mandatory state fingerprint registration, to “assisting” in obtaining and issuing patents (the service “Paying a patent for work for foreigners” was recently implemented by the Ministry of Digital Development on the public services portal), in accepting applications for registration of a foreign citizen at the place of residence and issuing arrival notifications. At the same time, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise and regional organizations will remain outside the system of migration registration bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – departmental subordination “allows you to regulate and control all aspects” of their activities, the explanatory note to the bill says.

These changes have not bypassed the trend towards universal digitalization of public services. Another “convenience for migrants” being developed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ministry of Labor should be a mobile application for citizens of the EAEU entering Russia, with the help of which it will be possible to find a job and find out if entry is open, the head of the Main Directorate for Migration of the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced on November 24 Valentina Kazakova. Recall that the EAEU is officially a single labor market, and it is no coincidence that the post-COVID period was chosen for the introduction of digital services for migrants: although the Russian Federation (and even more so the EAEU as a whole) as an importer of labor relatively little competes with other countries for the influx of labor, the introduction of digital services for temporary workers and migrants in importing countries is now experiencing a real boom, and in many ways the initiatives of the Russian Federation look like a way to “keep up”, for example, from the countries of the Persian Gulf. In general, Russia’s lead by digital services in public services in other jurisdictions, which was noted several years ago, is gradually disappearing, and the labor market for migrants is one of the areas sensitive to digital progress: for many migrants, it is understandable and open, ideally as far as possible and helps to overcome language barriers. the services of the host state are critical and can affect the volume of migration flows.

For the Russian Federation, as a labor-importing jurisdiction, right now the improvement of services for migrants is very relevant. Due to the shortage of personnel in the labor market, which arose due to the partial mobilization of Russian citizens to participate in the military operation in Ukraine, the White House is forced to remove restrictions on the hiring of foreign workers. This mainly concerns labor migrants from “visa-free” countries: in particular, the government recently abandoned quantitative and sectoral restrictions on the employment of citizens of Uzbekistan (see Kommersant of November 14). At the same time, the entry of workers from “visa” states is falling – for example, by the end of 2022, the Ministry of Labor, which regulates quotas for the issuance of “work” visas, based on the analysis of regional applications, proposed to reduce their number from the originally declared 100 thousand to 78 thousand. Now it’s hard to say to what extent the military operation itself influenced the dynamics of migration: we recall that migration flows between the Russian Federation and Ukraine have traditionally been very large, but it is not known to what extent the currently absent (at least in the direct route with closed borders) labor migration from Ukraine to The Russian Federation, very influential in the 2010s, is blocked by the flow of refugees from Ukraine to the Russian side, since some of them receive Russian citizenship; in general, this aspect of migration remains a mystery in statistics.

The increase in the load on the migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which deals with the registration of foreigners in the Russian Federation, probably creates the risk of a mini-collapse in this area or, at least, a significant lag behind the demand for labor imports due to a shortage of “capacity” of registering structures. So, speaking with a report in the State Duma on October 19, the head of the department, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, responding to criticism of the work of the department (in particular, it has one of the lowest ratings of citizens’ trust), noted that “we don’t have a queue of people who want to get a job for these positions ”, Personnel shortage is 20%, and the fault is low salaries in the department (see Kommersant of October 20). The “withdrawal” of part of the bureaucratic work on registering migrants outside the department should allow raising the salaries of such specialists – they are not covered by the ministerial tariff scale; The ministry also does not ask for funds for this from the budget. Finally, the corporate culture in the service federal state unitary enterprise located outside the perimeter of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, genetically connected with the MFC system, can be formed easier, faster and more conflict-free than within the Ministry of Internal Affairs system itself: the decision looks forced to some extent.

It should be noted that along with the simplification of the legal entry of migrants to work in Russia, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is also developing a bill that allows the use of information systems to search for illegal migrants. To this end, on September 30, the ministry submitted to the government a draft law “On the conditions for entry (exit) and stay (residence) in the Russian Federation of foreign citizens and stateless persons.” It provides for the introduction of loyalty agreements, registers of unscrupulous employers, as well as inviting and receiving foreigners. At that time, the department reported that when preparing corresponding changes in connection with the adoption of this law, the issue of introducing into the legislation the possibility of imposing expulsion not only for offenses in the field of migration, but also for others characterized by increased public harm, would be considered. In total, according to Vladimir Kolokoltsev, there are about 6 million foreign citizens in the Russian Federation, of which 9% do not have legal grounds for this.

It is not obvious to what extent the reorganization of the accounting system (usually critical for the perception of migrants by the host country and, in many respects, of migrants by such a country) in the future will affect the nature of the acceptance of migrants in society in the Russian Federation. By themselves, the scale of migration flows with “anti-migrant” sentiments in society, which, apparently, have weakened in recent years, are connected non-linearly – and no less important are the ideas about the legal status of migrants in society, on which the design of their registration and accounting system, according to the experience of others countries, affects.

Oleg Sapozhkov, Dmitry Butrin