Migration law violators to be banned from entering Russia – Putin

Published time: January 26, 2012 11:47
Edited time: January 26, 2012 18:00
Prime-minister Vladimir Putin visits Federal Migration Service (RIA Novosti/Yana Lapikova)

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has suggested closing the door for up to ten years to migrants who have repeatedly violated Russia’s migration law.

“I suggest barring those who repeatedly and persistently violate migration legislation, or have been extradited from the country under court decisions from Russia, for a term from five to ten years, or even more,” Putin told a board meeting of the Federal Migration Service.

The statement was made shortly after the Prime Minister and presidential hopeful published his manifesto article on national policy, where he suggested introducing tougher rules for migrants – mainly citizens of the former Soviet republics, now the Commonwealth of Independent States.

More than a million migrant workers come to Russia each year, seeking a better life and work conditions – many of them stay in the country illegally.

Speaking on Thursday, Putin also urged imposing criminal liability on both individuals and companies for promoting illegal migration.

“Penalties must be toughened against those who provoke illegal migration…and those who organize illegal migration streams, who hire people without permission and, in fact, use them [in Russia] as slaves who have no rights,” he said. Putin explained that the measures refer to organizers of night shelters and dormitories for illegal migrants.

The PM noted that so far, such violations have been subject mainly to nominal fines. He proposed making amendments to Russia’s Criminal Code. Head of Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstantin Romodanovsky, for his part, proposed introducing prison terms of up to five years for promoters of illegal migration.

The head of government recalled that in earlier statements, he had referred to migration policy, and said he now wanted to clarify his ideas. According to Putin, the quality of the migration policy will be based on the interests of Russian citizens.

“Russia is not going to shut itself out from any one. But what we absolutely need is to seriously raise the requirements for the quality of our migration policy, including the regulation of labor migration,” he told the FMS meeting.

He stressed that these measures will be taken, based on interests of economy and stability of Russian society. Putin also observed that with the growth of the home labor market, the country will need to increase its labor resources. This primarily applies to professionals. He recalled that the procedure of getting a work permit has been simplified for highly-qualified foreign specialists. However, only 14.5 thousand such permits have been obtained since July 2010.

“It’s a drop in the ocean compared to the overall immigration stream. But these are the people that we really need,” he said.

Putin noted that the practice of attracting skilled professionals is widely used in well-developed states.

“Russia should not be an exception – a country that anyone can enter any time and in any way,” he pointed out.

He said that business, law enforcements agencies, the Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service should co-ordinate their work. This would help to get an idea of how many people of this or that profession are needed in the various Russian regions.

Russia has a visa-free agreement with the majority of former Soviet republics. Putin said that he does realize the difficulties that arise from this for the FMS officers. Illegal migrants get extradited from Russia, “go home at our expense and come back.”

However, Moscow is not going to introduce visas for most CIS states for political reasons, otherwise it would “lose them completely,” Putin said.

The PM also noted that Russia has the lowest number of migration-related problems with Belarus and Kazakhstan. The three states are all members of a Customs Union that forms a common economic space, and are also planning to create a “Eurasian Union”.

Comments (26)

Larry (unregistered) 28.01.2012 19:55

Re Sean wrote in #19
My whole family I have good part of Native American Indian in me and if I could I would personally send all you Eurotrash back to Europe, but you aren't going anywhere and you racist white people probably should tone it down some.  I am just being honest with you bud. I'll bet that really makes sense sitting in your casino raking up free money from 'whitey'.....BTW...R ussia is the homeland of 'whitey' hence the name 'Caucasion'...so if you ever showed up, the Russians would have the perfect right to deport you..... 

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Bogdanov 28.01.2012 18:26

guest,
I grew up in the Central Asia (during Soviet times), in that so called "multinational soup" you are talking about. There were practically zero problems with that co-living of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Germans, Jews, Koreans, Greeks,... I had nothing, but great memories of that time. And I know all advantages and disadvantages of such lifestyle. I also have some rough ideas when such living is possible and when it doesn't work. I do not have any ideological problem when people choosing to live in the nationally-coherent communities or being part of the "multi... soup". Both, approaches are valid, both of them work in the appropriate conditions. And no one of them has advantages over the other one, in general. Because, it is determined primarily by the economical and political environment. The social structures are built on top of it. I understand that the Central and Northern Russia are primarily all-white-Russians mono-national environment. Quick and massive migration of groups who are different from them would be viewed as a catastrophe there. But, the same way the attempt to establish the mono-national environment, say, in the Southern Russia would lead to the revolt of the local people as well. Moscow is not that mono-national or mono-cultural environment. Moscovites do not have any rights to claim Russia-for-ethnic-Ru ssians-only. And, especially, "for-Orthodox/Christ ian Russians". And on the national scale. Because, it would be nothing but nationalism -- the attempt of artificially change the environment in favor one of the nation or religious groups populating the region. Somewhere in purely ethnic Russian towns and cities, that would not be the case. I would even support them -- there should be places in Russia for ethnic Russians only. The DPNI, in their current Nazi state, do not have rights to exist in Moscow. Moscow is a city of migrants and immigrants. It no longer a city of ethnic Russians. And especially, Christian Russians. The attempt to change that may lead to another Civil War and further disintegration of Russia. What Moscovites have rights to do -- to demand their lazy city government to take full control of the situation and sort out the problems related to the massive migration.

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Bogdanov 28.01.2012 18:16

guest,
You wrote: "DPNI was founded on exactly the idea of preventing massive unsupervised illegal imigration." The original idea and what movement ends up with are not necessarily the same things. The latest example -- the OWS in the US. Bigger examples -- the Communist Revolution in Russia, or even the Christianity -- the original idea of liberating people from pharisees and those rigid customs and rules they applied to them, over time, migrated to one of the most cruel and inhumane political philosophy for the sake of which other cultures burned to the ground. Till this day... Anyway, I was talking about current DPNI and not what they started with. I pointed out to this explicitly in my original post regarding this matter. And for the reasons, that the DPNI conduct their demonstration and protests, primarily in the Moscow region where I used to live for many years, I could get pretty vivid picture what is going on there, what DPNI demand and want, and who are members of that movement. And for those, who don't know that -- that region was a "multi... soup" for quite a while. Sines the Soviet times. And that "soup" consisted not only from local Moscovites, and non-ethnic-Russians, but, also, having many ethnic-Russian migrants (slaves) from many parts of the country, who were brought there by the Moscow government to serve (to do dirty work for) Moscovites. And those ethnic-Russian in no way better than anybody else who lived there. In fact, I suspect, that this is mostly them who demand the "Russian purity" in the region. So, this is not a problem of nationalities. It is a problem of the current Moscow government not doing its job.

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