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Migrants Targeted By Cabinet
MOSCOW — Russia should not permit the creation of so-called ethnic enclaves where foreigners outnumber native Russian citizens, a top migration official was quoted as saying in an interview published Thursday.Vyacheslav Postavnin, deputy director of the Federal Migration Service, was commenting on a new government move that bars immigrants from trading at street stalls and markets.
"According to our calculations, compact habitation by citizens of another country in any district or region of the country should not surpass 17 to 20 percent, especially if they have a different national culture and religious faith. Exceeding this norm creates discomfort for the indigenous population," Postavnin was quoted as saying by the Vremya Novostei daily.
President Vladimir Putin ordered his Cabinet last month to take steps to decrease the employment of foreign workers at Russian markets, alleging they were crowding out native Russian producers and retailers. Indoor and outdoor markets are staffed heavily by migrants from former Soviet republics, many of them working without official permission to reside in or work in Russia — and working long hours for pitifully low salaries.
According to a new Cabinet order regulating labor migration for the next year issued Wednesday, migrants will be prohibited from selling alcohol or pharmaceuticals as of Jan. 1. Foreigners should comprise no more than 40 percent of retail personnel employed outside ... |
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| British explorer Alexandra Tolstoy, a descendant of the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, sits on horseback in Moscow's Red Square on Thursday. Tolstoy arrived from a two-year expedition in Moscow in the last leg of a horseback expedition from Ashgabat that re-enacted a 1935 trip by Turkmen, who covered the 4,300 kilometer journey in 84 days, according to her website. |
In Flying Visit, Bush Positive On WTO
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush met Wednesday at Vnukovo-2 Airport, outside Moscow, where they confirmed the two countries had reached a critical trade deal and discussed Iran's nuclear program.The brief layover — Bush was en route to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum — featured few surprises and plenty of chitchat as the presidents and their wives feasted on crab salad, fish, blini with caviar and sundry desserts.
Putin and his wife, Lyudmila ... |
New Reality Tough on Russians in Latvia
RIGA, Latvia — The last Russian tank rolled out of Latvia more than a decade ago. But Inesa Kuznetsova, 75, a resident here for more than 50 years, has little doubt where she calls home."My address isn't a city. My address isn't a town. My address isn't a street," says the dressmaker, who arrived from Leningrad during World War II. "My address is the Soviet Union."
Kuznetsova's address is, in fact, Bolderaja, a largely Russian-speaking neighborhood on the outskirts of Riga, where a former Russian naval barracks sits empty and signs in the supermarket are in both Russian and Latvian. Here, she inhabits a parallel universe that has little to do with Latvia. She watches a Kremlin-funded television station, eats Russian food, and has no intention of learning the Latvian language — "Why the hell would I want to do that?" — though she says her grandchildren are being forced to do so.
Kuznetsova calls it an "insult" that residents who arrived after 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, must now take a naturalization exam to become Latvian citizens. She has not done so, instead pinning her hopes on a new "Russian occupation" of Latvia. This, she says, is gaining force due to the arrival of illegal workers from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, who have streamed into the country in recent months by the hundreds, if not thousands, to help fill the gap left by the nearly 100,000 Latvians who have left in search of a better life since ... |
