The Russian Norm project keeps delivering very interesting interviews.
Watch it. It’s fascinating both as a business story and for the part about how the guest, while a student at MIT, made money by beating casinos together with other students.
But that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about. In the interview, there’s a segment where they discuss me and my ideas on migration policy.
Semyon says he generally supports them (and I thank him for that), but, well, there are nuances.
Dukach invests in migrants; he sees them as an important driving force in the economy and in business. A migrant is, in essence, a bolder and more desperate person. And restricting migration—I support that view—seems unnatural and unfair to him. All people are equal.
It’s an important discussion, and I’m always glad to clarify and refine my position.
Do I believe that all people are equal? Absolutely.
Would I like to live in an ideal world with no visas or borders at all? Very much so. Someday humanity will get there, and we’ll free up huge resources that now go to border guards, migration control, and so on.
Do I think migrants are good for the economy? It’s silly even to argue about that—it’s basic economics.
However, none of these ideas changes the fact that here and now I live in Russia in 2019. In the real world.
And in that real world, real circumstances—religious extremism, cultural differences, different attitudes toward women, different attitudes toward minorities—place serious limits on how our ideas can be implemented in practice.
It’s one thing when a young man comes to the United States after finishing school in Moscow and getting into MIT. That’s an excellent migrant—everyone wants someone like that.
It’s another thing when you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of poorly educated people from rural villages fleeing poverty. In their aul (a rural settlement in Central Asia or the Caucasus), there is essentially no work paying more than one dollar a day, so it makes sense for them to go anywhere.
Migrants with a strong higher education or high school math scores should be welcomed with open arms right now. It doesn’t matter where they’re from: Belarus, Uzbekistan, or Ghana.
But when it comes to a migrant with only one year of primary school, then the standard rules should apply: a visa regime, an assessment of whether there is any need to bring in such a migrant, and so on.
Russia currently has a completely perverse system: - it is very hard to bring in a qualified specialist from abroad; - you have to pay a higher tax for them; - you’ll go out of your mind trying to arrange a long-term visa and work permit for someone from Switzerland.
but
- it is absurdly easy to bring in 300 citizens of Central Asian countries, who don’t just not need visas—they don’t even need international passports.
I propose doing things differently:
- completely abolish visas for citizens of the European Union and the United States
- abolish work permits for highly qualified specialists
- completely abolish work permits for any foreigners with a good education (for example, graduates of universities in the global top 300)
- introduce a normal visa regime for the countries of Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Not a discriminatory one, just a standard one—the kind that currently exists between Russia and the European Union
- have the state subsidize accelerated study of the Russian language and Russian culture for all migrants who do not have a solid education
- introduce insurance for migrants so that if a leg gets crushed on a construction site, they can properly go to a hospital and receive good treatment, instead of suffering in a site trailer and working while injured
- MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: work on increasing labor productivity so that we do not need so many workers hauling bricks upstairs and laying curbstones.
So what do you think of that, Elizaveta Osetinskaya and Semyon Dukach?