For a full day now, I’ve officially been a completely “non-system politician.” In other words, quite literally: I can’t run for anything, even if I want to. The “system” won’t let me in anywhere, and legal opportunities will only appear after the “system” is dismantled. I don’t feel any difference at all. If anything, it’s even simpler now: fewer idiots will write, "he’s only doing all this to become a deputy." You go become deputies yourselves, and I’ll help however I can. On the subject of deputies and laws. We are continuing to collect 100,000 verified signatures for a bill introducing visas with the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. So far, 32,700 signatures have been collected.
It’s quite curious that over the past few days we’ve seen several posts and columns with supposedly scientific explanations of “why visa entry is stupid.” Some of them even included this link and a call to vote against the initiative. As you can see, there are only 462 “against” votes so far. I’m not saying this to mock opponents of visas and their inability to consolidate (they don’t need to—after all, they have a super-lobbyist in Vladimir Putin, who expresses their position on this issue), but rather to say that some degree of opposition in a vote is always a good thing. Civilized opposition produces the right kind of discussion. The riots taking place on the streets of Moscow are, shall we say, gently hinting that there is something here worth discussing. The voting trend looks like this:
From here (thanks to Dmitry Ostanin for such a useful service). This is a bad graph, because it shows that everyone votes only after I put up a post on LiveJournal. I mean, if I’d been jailed the day before yesterday, what then—would we have resumed collecting signatures in five years? That’s no good at all. That’s exactly why we created the site http://visa.navalny.ru/: so it would be easy to promote our campaign without having to link to my LiveJournal posts. Everyone who supports the idea of introducing visas should act as a mini-lobbyist and promote the site or the voting page itself wherever possible, and keep doing so until we reach 100,000. And after that, we should keep talking about our demands, backed by one hundred thousand people, until a visa regime is introduced. That’s the only way; there is no other. As I promised, I’m preparing a post responding to all the critical remarks about the bill, but for now, read this interesting letter sent to me by a reader living in the UAE (Dubai). For all the differences between Russia and the UAE (and there are quite a few similarities too), I recommend it to everyone arguing about whether visas are necessary: Alexei, good evening! I read several of your recent posts about visas for migrants with great interest. By force of circumstance, I’ve spent the last few years in the Emirates (Dubai), and I know a bit about the visa situation in “that” country. To begin with, out of a population of about 10 million in the Emirates, only a little over 1 million are locals. Everyone else has come from all over the world. The majority are Indians, Pakistanis, and Filipinos. Then come the “white people”: Brits, Australians, Americans, Germans, Russians, and so on. In the Emirates, everyone needs a work visa (!!!!), regardless of what country they come from. At the same time, the employer must arrange the visa—it’s their responsibility. Visa control—that is, the number of visas an employer can “sponsor”—depends on the size of the company, and that quota is allocated by the state. You can’t register a company tomorrow, say, and get a quota for 500 visas. As for “sponsorship,” it’s far from an empty word. For EACH employee, the employer puts down a deposit of $1,000–$2,000, which is returned to the employer after the employee leaves the Emirates. If a person overstays their visa, or after being dismissed does not leave the country (and it should be noted that in the Emirates there is a law requiring employers to pay compensation to an employee even if they resign voluntarily, and to buy them a one-way ticket to the country they came from), then the local police put such people in jail (!!!) until someone buys the poor soul a ticket home. I bought such a ticket for my cleaning lady from the Philippines (we didn’t know she was in the country illegally). We bought her the ticket after she called from jail. As a result, there is virtually no crime among migrants in the country—not only among those in low-paid jobs, but also among “white-collar” workers. It seems to me that some of the Emirates’ laws could вполне well be introduced in Russia in general, and in Moscow in particular. Your lawyers have probably already looked at the experience of countries with large migrant populations, and this letter is unlikely to tell you anything new, but if not, take a look at the Emirates’ laws (they are available online—google Government of Dubai immigration procedure). Of course, the approach described above is somewhat totalitarian, but on the other hand, in a country where migrants outnumber the local population many times over, it works perfectly well. Dubai’s labor legislation is far from perfect, but even it protects migrants from unscrupulous employers and from the other problems migrants face in Moscow: police, registration, healthcare, and so on. I very much want to believe that Russian legislation will be no less fair. I hope my opinion will be useful to you. I only ask that you not mention my name if you decide to quote anything from my letter. So there you have it. There are ways to solve these problems, and those solutions need to be proposed. We are proposing an important and civilized initiative: visa regulation, which exists all over the world. It should not be the only measure, but it is the basic one. Opponents of a visa regime are suggesting that we do absolutely nothing and wait for Putin’s regime to collapse, after which Society of Law and Rights, together with the Invisible Hand of the Market, will sort everything out on their own—to the delight of the residents of Biryulyovo (a Moscow district associated with anti-migrant unrest). The collapse of Putin’s regime would be great, and I’m very much looking forward to it too, but even before that I would like—together with many other people—to express my position: entry into Russia from the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus should be permit-based, not free. And by the way, I want to say that the visa-free regime and millions of migrant laborers living in near-slavery are one of the political and economic pillars of that very “Putin regime.” Vote if you agree. Promote it if you think it matters.