“Green Card” for Repatriates

Anatoly Bublik, head of the “Path Home” movement, commented on Gennady Yakubov’s interview about ways out of the “migration crisis”. 

When you work closely with migration, everyone around you feels it is their duty to send you every news item and statement on the subject they can find online. And, as so often happens in life, you have to skim what they send—just in case there is something important.

I also skimmed this article the first time around, but then had to go back and read it again. What caught my attention was that the person expressing his opinion is not a public figure and works in an environment where, according to the old, hackneyed myth, the people being discussed supposedly work. A person trying to understand what concerns many in our country deserves at least some attention. The journalist’s questions may seem simple at first glance, but there can be no simple answers to them. Migrants have become far too deeply woven into our lives over the past 30 years.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Gennady Yakubov is not immersed deeply enough in the issue of migration to understand that the problem is far more global. After all, even the term “labor migration” used in this interview is not enshrined in Russian law. De jure, all migrants here are equal, regardless of what language they speak, what people or tribe they belong to, or where their ancestors came from—they are all simply migrants. Our “heaven-dwellers” do not want the distinctions that exist throughout the world, and that would simplify many processes and solve many problems. Surely we cannot lump together a descendant of our Cossacks from Australia and a semi-criminal, illiterate bearded man from a kishlak! They come to our country with different aims and intentions! And we should treat them differently! One comes here to his historic homeland, and his children will defend our country. He will work here and pay taxes. But why does the other come…? No one can give a definitive answer!

It is frightening even to imagine the burden our state bears by indulging the policy course of the past! The flow of money to the countries from which “workers” come here is immeasurable. Yet we keep on failing to notice this, and even increase our spending by inviting the families of migrant workers from Asia and providing them with everything they need. At the same time, families of our Russian people who found themselves outside our homeland and are returning from other countries have to practically fight their way in, facing a huge number of obstacles and difficulties, many of them deliberately created. It feels as if the bureaucracy is taking full revenge on repatriates (thanks to our President, we now have this term) for all the concessions we make to unskilled visitors from Asia. This is outright discrimination in a state governed by the rule of law! And what is interesting is that it is much harder for our people or their descendants to come from other countries than it is for “labor” migrants, yet they all take the same exams in Russian, history, and the fundamentals of law! Where is the logic?

In his interview, Gennady says that a sufficient number of highly qualified specialists will not come here. And he is right—because we simply do not let them in! We put up barriers that are difficult to overcome. We raise visa prices, while not introducing visas at all for Central Asian countries. We raise the cost of processing documents, increase consular fees, deprive tourists of the opportunity to buy SIM cards, fail to train our inspectors to properly process such resettlers, complicate paperwork, do not allow them to work until they obtain some form of legal status in the country, tax them at 30% for their first six months, and regularly change document forms—we do everything to drive away those we actually need! It is a strange imbalance…

We need to change the system—and change it seriously!

Gennady named several measures that could change the current situation: targeted recruitment of labor migrants, making companies responsible for attracting labor migrants, banning this group from bringing their families, and deportation for any criminal offense. I support these measures, but they are not enough! We urgently need to make it easier for our repatriates to enter, establish a “Green Card” program, reduce paperwork and bureaucratic processes, digitize the relocation and cross-border crossing process, replace illegal immigrants with law-abiding, hardworking Russian people wherever possible, and increase labor productivity and wages. There is much more we need to do!

But this requires political will, and we know there is not much of it these days. So we live caught between two fires: on the one hand, we need workers, and on the other, we do not want those workers to be on our side of the border illegally…

Anatoly Bublik, Head of the “Path Home” movement