Putin and Sobyanin are also very much opposed to introducing a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. But since the migration problem cannot be ignored, they are proposing “alternatives.” And I urge all opponents of a visa regime to take a closer look at these “alternatives”: it is precisely their irresponsible position that encourages the Kremlin riffraff to come up with inventions like these. 1.
Anatoly Yakunin, head of the Moscow police department, has decided that every Friday Moscow will conduct operations to search for undocumented migrants. This was reported by Interfax on October 18. As part of the special operations, which will be called “Signal,” law enforcement agencies will inspect the apartments of newcomers. The number of street patrols across the city will also be increased on those days. Yakunin explained that the entire Moscow police force would be involved in these operations, along with volunteer patrol groups, private security firms, and other “law-enforcement-oriented organizations”. http://lenta.ru/news/2013/10/18/check/ 2.
Sobyanin proposed charging labor migrants a fee upon entry into the Russian Federation. MOSCOW, October 19. /ITAR-TASS/. Hiring migrants from other countries should be made economically disadvantageous, and federal lawmakers could address this issue. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said this today in an interview with the Rossiya 1 TV channel. “From the standpoint of federal legislation, I believe we need to consider making migration less economically attractive than hiring our own Russian citizens,” the mayor said. “Why is a migrant more advantageous for an employer today? First, the salary is lower. Second, no insurance contributions are paid. And often no taxes at all,” he added. In Sobyanin’s view, “it is necessary to make migrants, when crossing the border, immediately pay some kind of bonus equivalent to all these payments.” “Then this labor force will become more expensive and less attractive. We will knock out the economic basis for it,” he explained. http://www.itar-tass.com/c659/918593.html The resounding smack of palms hitting foreheads could be heard all across Russia—millions of people did it at once.
Well, I won’t even bother talking about the “anti-migrant raids on Fridays.” The Interior Ministry has basically made an official announcement: on Fridays, we’ll be going around construction sites and markets collecting cash. So get your envelopes ready and hide the migrants so we “don’t find” them. The second initiative deserves closer attention, because we will all notice its effects very quickly: in the form of more robberies and more handbags being snatched out of people’s hands. Sobyanin is proposing that migrants pay a quasi-tax to cover the taxes that they (and their employers) in fact do not pay. How large should it be? Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that personal income tax for a nonresident is not 13% but higher, and let’s not calculate insurance contributions. Let’s take 30% of wages (in reality, MUCH more). Let us assume that a young citizen of Uzbekistan from a rural area who has just arrived in Moscow (a typical migrant) quickly finds a job paying 15,000 rubles a month. That means that over a year he will earn 180,000 rubles, and these supposedly “underpaid taxes and contributions” will amount to 54,000 rubles. Obviously, no one comes for seasonal work for less than a year. Thus, the “Sobyanin bonus” would have to be at least 54,000 rubles, or $1,800. And that is when the average salary in Tashkent (where wages are the highest) is $150–230. So, you are a young Uzbek/Tajik/Kyrgyz man. You cannot find work, and if you do, it is brutally hard agricultural labor that pays next to nothing. You won’t be able to buy not just an iPhone, but even a pair of sneakers. So you have to go to Russia—where even the most miserable and impoverished existence is far better than life in a kishlak (a rural village in Central Asia). Any job and any wage will let you send $150 home and save $100 for yourself. You go and sign up for work. You are loaned money for a plane ticket at insane interest rates. You have some savings that will let you survive for a month without wages. But now you also have to pay the “Sobyanin bonus” of $1,800. Slave traders will lend you that too, at high interest. As a result, you have barely crossed the Russian border and you already owe $2,000–3,000. The debt has to be worked off, so the thought increasingly creeps into your head that, in order to “make back” your costs, you should bring 150 grams of heroin with you, as some of your relatives did, or mug a couple of women near the metro at night, as other relatives did. All the more so because the Moscow police are so helpless that the chance of punishment is no more than 20%. Good odds. And that’s it. The absurdity of these ideas is obvious enough. Yet they keep appearing. I’ll repeat once again: they arise because even many sensible people, instead of advocating the use of the existing practices of civilized countries, shout all sorts of irresponsible nonsense: *the world should have no borders! visas solve nothing! we don’t have the rule of law here, so we don’t need visas either—let everything stay as it is! ponies! we need magical ponies! *The United States, the United Kingdom, and EU countries all use visa regimes to regulate the number of migrants. It is not the perfect mechanism, but no one is planning to abandon it. And all those wonderful columnists writing that a visa regime would not help Russia are themselves standing in line at embassies. Take a responsible position, citizens. Support the introduction of a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Today is a day off, and you can surely find a few minutes to vote for the bill on the Russian Public Initiative website. This is the key, civilized solution to the problem of the influx of migrants into Russia. Of course, it should not be the only one and must be part of a broader set of measures, but without it all other measures lose their meaning. http://visa.navalny.ru/