A government bill submitted to the State Duma proposes introducing new categories of duties and increasing existing fees for processing documents for labor migrants. What goal does the government pursue with these changes?
New duties will be introduced for processing labor migrant patents. The new cabinet bill, submitted for consideration, introduces several new categories of such duties. The fee for issuing, re-issuing a patent, or extending the validity period of a permit will be 4200 rubles. For issuing a duplicate patent or making changes to it, the fee will be 2100 rubles.
It is also proposed to establish or increase a number of other state duties for migrants, including registration at the place of stay, registration at the place of residence, extension of the period of temporary stay in Russia, and registration actions related to vehicles.
The initiative was commented on for Business FM by Dmitry Minin, General Director of the design and construction company “Atlant”, who will soon be hiring migrants again:
In my opinion, the government`s initiative is good, but it is important that the employer is protected. There should be some amendment, an addition, where the employer will be protected from the employee leaving them. Roughly speaking, by paying money for them, the employer is buying their time for a certain period.
— Is the employer not protected at all in this regard currently?
— In my experience, the employer is currently not protected. Investing money in someone, we don`t know if that money might be lost. And when you hire 100 people, 100 people multiplied by 4 – that`s already a quite large sum.
— Are you advocating for a kind of targeted patent?
— A targeted patent is good, but it`s important to protect the employer. It would be more correct if this employee was tied to that specific company.
— But do you think this measure might deter some migrants?
— I`ve heard, on the contrary, that there will now be some influx of migrants from India and migrants from Korea, so, on the contrary, within the framework of the new flow that we plan to receive, it would be logical to do it right from the start. We are dependent on them anyway because we won`t be able to handle the volume of construction that is planned and will happen with our own resources. And those migrants we had before were indeed, as you say, not quite `white schemes`; they left.
Duties will be levied on both the arriving individuals and their employers, depending on the country of origin. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin explained via his Telegram channel that “those arriving from visa-free countries obtain a patent, the cost of which averages 8-10 thousand rubles per month. It can be valid for a maximum of one year. Afterward, the patent application process must be repeated.”
Migrants from visa-required countries arrange their work permits themselves. Commenting is Mikhail Zakharov, a leading expert at the Center for Political Analysis:
Indeed, it is a perfectly logical situation when, with terribly low unemployment, which is rather detrimental to the economy, the government is effectively giving up cheap labor from Central Asian countries. The logic here is rather somewhat politico-technological. Our population, on the whole, doesn`t really like outsiders. There is a perception that migrants commit a significant number of crimes, migrants are to some extent linked to increased drug trafficking, and therefore the population, the citizens of Russia, largely demand that this problem be somehow addressed. On the one hand, there is a lobby that demands more migrants for construction, for example, developers are always asking that migrants who work on construction sites not be bothered. And on the other hand, there is a demand from broad segments of society to somehow not let migrants in.
— In your assessment, will the tightening measures against migrants continue?
— At some point, there will simply be nowhere left to tighten; there is always some limit. Again, measures to enhance control are happening, but if migrants do not fundamentally stop coming to Russia, then yes, it will be somewhat less comfortable for them, but as long as the economic advantages outweigh the temporary difficulties, there will still be some influx of migrants. The other thing is that for many years now, they have also been looking to other countries around the world because, for example, people from Central Asian countries are already working well in Turkey, and Russia is no longer seen as the only possible country to sell their labor. There is a demand for cheap labor, and there is a demand from citizens to ban everyone. There is a push and pull here; I do not see a situation in which one of these two logics will prevail.
According to Vyacheslav Volodin, the State Duma will begin considering the bill on migrant duties this week.
“This will not only increase budget revenues but also enhance control over migrants and establish their actual places of stay, which, in turn, will help reduce illegal migration,” Volodin noted.
Rupert Blackwood 
Clement Ashworth