Russia Building Its Own ‘Mexican Wall’ Against Immigrants, Lobunov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 12 – More than a third of Russia’s federal subjects have introduced restrictions since 2014 on the kinds of work immigrant workers are allowed to perform and thus on the numbers of immigrants they are prepared to take in, thus erecting what Yury Lobanov calls that country’s version of “’a Mexican wall.’”

            But in addition to these regional bricks in the wall, the Moscow analyst continues, the federal authorities have introduced analogous ones of their own, measures that limit the number of immigrants both in the regions that have imposed their own restrictions and in the others (forbes.ru/finansy-i-investicii/374679-borba-s-migrantami-kak-rossiya-stroit-svoyu-meksikanskuyu-stenu).

                “Since 2007,” Lobanov says, “the government has established the permissible share of foreign workers in enterprises of various branches. These vary widely from complete prohibitions in the case of pharmacies to 25 and then 15 percent in alcohol trade to much higher shares in many other kinds of production and sale of goods.

            According to the analyst, “the general trend is a growth in the number of walls and in their height.” The latest restriction, one imposing a severe cutback in the number of immigrants Russian firms can employ, is in construction. Immigrants dominated that sector but now 20 percent of those employed must be Russians or citizens of Eurasian Economic Community.

            Moreover, since 2008, Moscow has imposed an overall quota of immigrants. Initially it was four million; but over time, it has been reduced according to “the logic of import substitution” to 150,000 annually. But the beneficiaries of these restrictions are not Russian workers but the bosses of the shadow and criminal sectors of the economy.

            Miroslave Mitrofanov, an ethnic Russian who represents Latvia in the European Parliament, says that “each labor migrant initially is a win for the economy of the receiving country because the recipient country hasn’t spent anything on his education and he is prepared to work more and for lower pay than are local residents.”

            But imposing restrictions doesn’t help raise the pay of local workers but rather creates problems for companies which have relied on such workers, the representative says. And it quite often keeps the economies of countries that take such measures from achieving the economic growth they might otherwise experience.

            “And so,” Lobanov continues, “limiting the field of activities for labor migrants at a minimum is a useless stupidity and at a maximum a diversion against one’s own economy. More often than now, such limiting measures in no way work in accordance with economic goals.” In short, such measure do not “defend the economy” of the recipient country but hurt it.

            Svetlana Gannushkna, who heads the Migration and Law Network, says that most of the time what happens is this: “If the migrants cannot occupy some vacancies as a result of prohibitions, then our citizens will not occupy these places either” because they do not want to do the kind of jobs that migrant workers are prepared to perform.

            Further, such restrictions and repressions “feed corruption,” she continues.  Migrants often continue to work but to do so illegally. That drives the wages of the immigrants down but it also drives the wages of others as well, while boosting the profits for businesses which are prepared to skirt or completely ignore the rules.

            Thus, any gains from the Russian “’Mexican wall’” go not “to the economy as a w hole but also to its shadow, criminal and corrupt sectors,” Lobanov concludes.  Unfortunately, he adds, there is little or no hope that the current Russian authorities are about to change this in any fundamental way.