Russia is Launching a Campaign Against Migrants, But In Fact, They are Lacking

How the campaign against migrants is going

It began after the March 22 terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall by natives of Tajikistan.

In July, the State Duma adopted, as the deputies themselves say, “the most serious amendments to migration legislation in recent times.” From February 2025, police officers will be able to expel migrants from Russia without a court decision for certain administrative offenses. For example, for “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations and pedophilia,” drinking alcohol in public places and violating the rules of behavior at stadiums. There was a proposal to legally oblige migrants to avoid domestic conflicts with Russians, but it was not included in the final text.

Later, the State Duma proposed several other anti-migrant measures: the period of residence in marriage with a Russian citizen to obtain citizenship is planned to increase from two to three years, migrants working under a labor contract are to be prohibited from bringing their families with them. The Ministry of Education recommends limiting the number of foreigners’ children who speak Russian poorly in schools and kindergartens — no more than three in a class or group.

In the fall, the State Duma began the fight against so-called illegal migration. In early October, five bills were introduced into parliament at once, and here is what the authors propose:

• to consider the illegal presence of a person on the territory of Russia as an aggravating circumstance in any crime (this will give the court the opportunity to impose full sentences on illegal immigrants, as well as to impose real sentences for minor crimes, Irina Yarovaya explained);

• consider organizing illegal migration a particularly major crime when it is committed by an organized group and for the purpose of committing major crimes (maximum sentence of 15 years imprisonment);

• increase fines for document forgery in the organization of illegal migration;

• toughen penalties for fictitious residence registration and permit registration, for which up to five years of imprisonment will be possible;

• prohibit intermediaries from taking Russian language proficiency exams from migrants: only government-approved organizations will be able to issue the relevant certificates;

• block websites with information on illegal migration services without a court decision.

In addition, in 2025 Russia will have a “register of controlled persons,” which will include foreigners illegally staying in the country. They will be banned from driving, using banks, registering children for school, etc. The police will be able to use data from their phones and will have access to houses or apartments where illegals live.

Since 2023, Russia has had quotas that determine the proportion of foreign employees in different industries. At the regional level, complete bans on migrants from working in certain sectors have begun to appear. For example, in several regions they are banned from working in taxis, and in the Moscow region, from January 1 migrants will not be able to work in trade, health care and education.

The anti-migrant rhetoric of the authorities is also increasing, and at different levels. The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, speaks of an increase in serious crimes among migrants, in particular rape and drug trafficking. At the same time, according to the Interior Ministry data, the number of serious crimes by migrants, including rape, decreased in 2023. This is not the first time Bastrykin has manipulated migrant crime statistics; how he does it, IStories described here.

The most resonant, perhaps, was a statement by a representative of the Moscow Region Interior Ministry. According to him, at the regional level, the main task in the area of migration is formulated as follows: “To lighten the Moscow region so that it is not blackened, so to speak, by foreign citizens.” “The problem is that they want to live here instead of us,” Senator Andrei Klishas explains.

Will migrants now start leaving Russia en masse?

That is not likely to happen. “Xenophobic rhetoric incites hatred. But I don’t think this reason alone can significantly reduce the flow of labor migrants from the CIS to Russia,” says a Russian demographer who requested anonymity. According to him, Central Asian migrants have no choice where to go to work: Russia remains the most accessible country for them in legal, linguistic and other respects.

The main suppliers of labor to Russia are Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the average salary is $200–400 a month. And in Russia — about $850 a month.

In reality, the salaries of migrants who come to Russia to work can be much higher. There are several sectors where migrants are traditionally numerous: construction, trade, logistics, housing and utilities, taxis, and delivery. In order to retain employees or hire new ones, employers are forced to raise wages. According to the platform Migrant Service, for the first six months of 2024, the salaries of migrants increased by 23%, with an increase of 38% in industry and 67% for couriers, from 90 thousand rubles per month to 150 (about $1,500). In Moscow, a courier’s salary can indeed reach 150 or even 200 thousand rubles ($1,500–2,000), confirms an economist who asked not to be named.

Russians will not be able to replace migrants, as they will not agree to work and live in the same conditions, says Natalia Zubarevich, an economist and professor at Moscow State University. Using construction as an example, she explains it this way: “Russians, in order to come to construction sites near Moscow or Moscow, must rent a place to live. They are not ready to live, as foreign workers are used to, with ten people in a one-room apartment. In order for them to be able to rent this accommodation, their wages would have to rise very substantially. Is the Russian developer ready for this? I doubt it very much. It is not possible to increase costs indefinitely.”

The general director of a company that supplies construction materials spoke about the different labor conditions for migrants and Russians: “We are raising wages for everyone. Another thing is that a migrant’s wage can be raised, but for this wage, which is the same as that of Russians, a migrant can be asked to work longer hours, for example, a 12-hour working day and a six-day week.”

Why Russia needs migrants

The Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration estimates that about 3.5 million migrants will be working in Russia in 2023, about a million fewer than before the COVID pandemic, 4–4.5% of total employment. Rosstat notes a decline in the number of foreign workers entering Russia. According to its data, 560,000 migrants entered Russia in 2023, 23% less than a year earlier and the lowest value since 2013.

Migrants are already starting to be lacking. According to surveys by hh.ru and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, more than half of the companies hiring foreigners are facing a shortage. A year ago, business ombudsman Boris Titov proposed to Vladimir Putin to simplify the migration mechanism for workers from Southeast Asia — according to him, “it is no longer possible to meet the need for labor resources at the expense of CIS citizens.”

The State Duma warned back in December that the shortage of workers in the housing and utilities sector could reach 50%, and migrants, who have always “helped the industry,” no longer want to work in it. “We have a shortage of 14,000 workers. We didn’t have that many migrants, but I feel that we will have to invite them,” said Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of the Bryansk Oblast, in September 2024.

In September, Yandex Taxi warned about the price increase by tens of percent year-on-year. The main reason is the shortage of personnel, associated, among other things, with the tightening of migration policy. According to the company, by the end of the year Russia will be short of about 130 thousand taxi drivers. According to the estimates of the chairman of the Public Council for Taxi Development, since the beginning of the year trips have gone up in price by 30%, by the end of the year prices may rise by another 30%.

Food delivery chain stores faced an “unprecedented shortage of personnel,” especially pickers and couriers, at the beginning of the year. To offset some of their costs, stores are raising online prices — when ordering delivery, goods can cost 5–10% more.

Now any action against the saturation of the labor market will slow down the Russian economy, says an economist who requested anonymity: “The departure of the labor force by a million or just under a million people is very significant for Russia. But you have to realize that this is a non-linear progression. Now the value of each migrant has become greater, that is, the more of them leave Russia, the more valuable that migrant is to the Russian economy.”

The shortage of migrants is a consequence of the general deficit in the labor market. The Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimates that at the end of 2023, Russia will lack 4.8 million workers. At the beginning of 2024, Putin mentioned a figure of 2.5 million: “Right now, the construction sector, industry, and so on — right now they are ready to take hundreds of thousands [of workers].”

There are no labor resources left inside Russia: on October 10, Putin said that unemployment in the country is “practically non-existent.” From a demographic point of view, the main reason for the labor shortage is that the small generations of the 1990s and early 2000s are entering the labor market. In addition, hundreds of thousands of able-bodied men went to the war or left Russia after the outbreak of war.

No one expects the situation on the labor market to change in the coming years. On the horizon of five years, Russia needs about 5 million workers — just to compensate for the demographic hole, notes Dmitry Sergienkov, general director of hh.ru. “The staff shortage is for a long time, until the first third of the 2030s. There are no people,” says Natalia Zubarevich.