Restrictions on Migrant Workers Already Hitting Russian Citizens, Especially Those who aren’t Ethnically Russian or Don't Appear to Be

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 18 – Russian officials are imposing ever more restrictions on which kinds of jobs migrant workers can take, a position that more than half of the Russian population supports. But these limits on migrants are increasingly having an impact on anyone who doesn’t look Slavic including many ethnic Russians, the People of Baikal portal says.
    With the imposition of restrictions, Russian police in many places, the news agency says, are challenging people who don’t look Slavic and demanding that they prove that they are not immigrants (baikal-journal.ru/2024/12/18/chem-tak-stradat-na-chuzhoj-zemle-luchshe-uehat-otsyuda/).
    The more limitations Moscow and the federal subjects place on immigrants, the more frequent this phenomenon is likely to become, something that revives a longstanding tradition in Russia of extending attacks on one group to others perceived to be similar or somehow related and that threatens to make such repression even more widespread.
    Indeed, this trend recalls an old and bitter Soviet joke about a Russian rabbit who is seeking to flee into Poland. When asked why he is doing so, the Russian rabbit says that it is because the police are arresting camels. When it is pointed out that he isn’t a camel, the rabbit says “Yes, but just try to prove that!”