MOSCOW: Fuad, an illegal migrant from Azerbaijan, is thinking of going home after five years’ work as a loader and brick-carrier in Moscow’s booming shadow economy. He tells of forced labour, bribes paid to policemen and beatings while in custody. His last employer, a Moscow warehouse, simply refused to pay him the 4,000 roubles ($140) he was owed for a month’s work as a loader.
“What can you do? The warehouse guards had guns and I didn’t even have the right documents. If I had called the police, they would have arrested me,” the 26-year-old said.
“Here you are nothing, you don’t have any rights, you are like a slave,” he said in Russian with a strong Azeri accent.
Millions of people have flocked to Moscow and other affluent Russian cities since the fall of the Soviet Union, in search of work and cash to help support their families back home. They come from all over Russia and former Soviet territories, where incomes are far below those of Moscow.
Many face a harsh reception as second-class citizens and grim working conditions in the shadow of Moscow’s glitz — but it is estimated that they manage to funnel $10 billion a year back home to their dependants.
Just 10 per cent of Russia’s 5-7 million migrant workers are in the country legally, experts say. Off the record, officials put the total at nearer 10 million.
President Vladimir Putin has welcomed the extra muscle that migrant workers bring to the economy, easing the effects of Russia’s demographic decline that economists fear could stunt growth.
The total population fell by 694,000 last year and by 2050 it could have dropped by a third, according to official forecasts — a reality that will enhance the value of the migrant workforce.
However, none of this has coalesced into coherent policy.
“There are two ways to cut population decline — cutting the death rate and encouraging migration,” said a government official who did not wish to be identified. “But everything is mixed up with migration at the moment — it all seems to be done backwards, with no organization.”
Officials concede policy is confused. Highly-skilled workers are being discouraged. Many simply sidestep the expensive and time-consuming bureaucracy to secure legal status, thereby joining the millions of illegal migrants, who do not pay tax and are prey to a whole underworld of threats.
Migrant workers routinely have to work without wages and are faced with violence from employers, according to a survey by Elena Tyuryukanova, a leading researcher at the Institute for Socio-Economic Population Studies in Moscow.—Reuters
MOSCOW: Fuad, an illegal migrant from Azerbaijan, is thinking of going home after five years’ work as a loader and brick-carrier in Moscow’s booming shadow economy. He tells of forced labour, bribes paid to policemen and beatings while in custody. His last employer, a Moscow warehouse, simply refused to pay him the 4,000 roubles ($140) he was owed for a month’s work as a loader.
