Migrants in Russia: More Harm Than Good - 4 March, 2003

Number of “labor migrants” in Russia makes up 3.5-5 million people now. This is an estimate given by director general of the Coordination Council of Russia’s Employers Associations, Oleg Yeremeyev. At the same time, the number of officially registered “labor migrants” in Russia makes up only 350 thousand people. Meanwhile, Oleg Yeremeyev thinks that labor migration is a negative process for the country on both levels, micro and macro.

As director general of the Coordination Council of Russia’s Employers Association admits, employment of illegal migrants poses a great risk, as stealing and damages caused to basic assets by such workers sometimes several times exceed economy in wages for this category of people.

Besides, labor migrants who are not registered officially are provided medical services out of the money of the obligatory medical insurance fund. In future this may make a breach in the obligatory medical insurance fund, as employers make no payments for workers who are not officially registered at their enterprises.

Besides, inflow of labor migrants results in lowering of man power proficiency level in Russia on the whole, what is more it may cause outflow of qualified workers from Russia.

Oleg Yeremeyev informed that the last session of the commission on migration policy decided to coordinate efforts of the CIS countries, Russia, Ukraine and Moldavia in particular, for reduction of illegal “labor migrants” in the framework of the agreement on struggle against illegal migration concluded in March 1998.

Alexey Poponin
PRAVDA.Ru