VLADIVOSTOK: Russia is struggling to keep illegal workers from neighbouring Asian countries flooding into its underpopulated Far East, with border officials helpless because of the huge demand for cheap labour.
Federal authorities have maintained stringent quotas for legal labour imported from China, North Korea and Vietnam and other nearby states in 2004, allowing only 41,000 foreigners to work officially in far eastern regions.
The largest quota of 15,000 workers was awarded to the maritime Primorye region, which borders northeast China and a small stretch of North Korea.
However, a relaxed visa regime makes an easy route for thousands of illegal workers, many of whom cross Russia’s borders from China as tourists, local security officials say.
In the first 11 months of 2003, 297,000 people crossed the border into Primorye, 70 per cent of them Chinese citizens, of whom four in five entered Russia under the visa-free regime.
“Some 50 per cent of Chinese citizens who worked illegally in Primorye came here as visa-free tourists” who can spend up to 30 days in Russia at a time, deputy chief of the FSB security service’s Primorye department Alexander Bondar explained.
Visas do nothing to stem the flow, either, as “Chinese nationals legally enter the region on commercial visas and then stay in the country to work here illegally,” Bondar added.
Moreover, those who cross from China or North Korea often use fake passports, he said.
During the 30 days stipulated by the terms of the visa-free regime, tourist visitors largely escape official control, allowing them to take up small trade, shoe repair, cooking, collecting seafood and wild plants, or construction work.
Over the past 11 months, police found nearly 15,000 illegal workers from China and North Korea.
“This trend reoccurs year after year and confirms that the labour market has already formed a steady demand for a cheap foreign workforce,” the chief of Primorye police’s migration service Sergei Pushkaryov said.
Responding to fears that the sparsely-populated far eastern regions will be overrun by Asian immigrants, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday in a nationally televised question-and-answer session that more controls were needed.
“The issue is tricky. We shouldn’t halt but regulate it. We should know where, how many migrants we have,” he said.
In a measure of the Russian dilemma, the governor of Primorye invited North Korean refugees living in China to find a job in his region, saying he was ready to accept 200,000 refugees if they were willing to work.
“We have a plan of action,” the governor told reporters in Tokyo.
“If North Korean refugees show up at the borders, we could welcome 200,000 who could come to live in our region and work in our companies,” he said.
Of the legally imported workforce in the Russian far east, nearly 70 per cent come from China, another 15 per cent travel from North Korea and some 10 per cent make their way to Russia from Vietnam.
At least half of all legal workers are employed in trade and state food production, up to 25 per cent work on construction sites and just over 10 per cent lend a hand in farming communities.
This year an outbreak of atypical pneumonia, which forced Russia to temporarily close down its borders for nearly a month, cut into the ranks of illegal workers and allowed the authorities to temporarily curb the phenomenon.
But the Primorye administration has vowed stricter measures as the problem returned once the borders reopened, creating a special commission to unite the efforts of various government agencies tasked with combating illegal migration.
The new commission’s first intended act is a thorough sweep of the region’s markets in a bid to flush out illegal immigrants.
An estimated 30,000 Chinese people are working in Primorye’s markets.—AFP