Migrants Given Legal Status
The Associated Press
MOSCOW — More than 7,000 illegal migrant workers have been granted legal status by Russian authorities in a policy experiment, and the Interior Ministry considers a plan to legalize hundreds of thousands of illegal workers “beneficial,” Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin said Wednesday. Addressing the State Duma on Wednesday, Chekalin said more than 7,000 illegal migrant workers in 10 regions received legal status between September and November and that the Interior Ministry advocated a one-time legalization of migrants. “The Foreign Ministry, the Interior Ministry and the Federal Migration Service have practically worked out techniques to help legalize migrant workers,” in other regions, Chekalin said, RIA-Novosti reported. Chekalin hesitated to call the plan an “amnesty.” “But helping foreigners come out from the shadows and receive legal status and putting them on migration and tax records would be mutually beneficial for the government and the foreigners,” Chekalin said. Also speaking at the Duma session, FMS head Konstantin Romodanovsky said more than 20 million migrants come to Russia each year, primarily from former Soviet republics, and that around 10 million of them do so illegally. Romodanovsky said Russia’s economic losses due to immigration totaled $7 billion annually, RIA-Novosti said. “It incurs huge damages to the country,” Romodanovsky said, RIA-Novosti reported. The State Duma is set on Friday to consider two bills aimed at liberalizing Russia’s migration policy, the news agency Rosbalt reported Tuesday.
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