Global Immigration: Russian Federation - Essay Example

Global Immigration: Russian Federation The issue of global immigration has become a huge problem for many countries lately. Mostly it concerns the big states where the level of life is quite better than in the average countries and there are more opportunities for people to reach some success. Even though the reasons for immigration can be different, still the growing amount of immigrants causes multiple problems and changes in a country’s social life and economic development. As far as Russian Federation is considered to be the second largest immigration country, there are multiple problems concerning immigration and they will be analyzed further. Russian Federation is the largest in area country in the world. It contains a lot of regions populated by people from different cultures and ethnicities. Though the country doesn’t set itself up as the liberal one and doesn’t really welcome different cultures. Vice versa the National Immigration Service works hard to fight with illegal immigrants as immigration situation in modern Russia is complicated and causes a lot of problems for society. The problem started to appear in 1990’s when the USSR collapsed and Russian people became free to immigrate to other countries, as they hadn’t had that opportunity in Soviet Union; in addition, a lot of Russians who in soviet times were forced to leave certain territories like North Caucasus came back to their motherlands. Another factor of the depopulation was the high level of mortality and weak health care system. So the post-Soviet Russia started suffering from population crisis (Anderson 437). However, the Russian borders also became open for several ethnicities who were evicted from their native lands that were parts of soviet territory. Since the collapse of Soviet Union Russian Federation has become one of the most powerful states in the world and definitely it made Russia attractive for immigrants, so it is “the world’s second largest immigration heaven” (Malinkin n.pag.) nowadays. In American society Russia isn’t considered to be the country where people usually strive to move. This fact became obvious when in his recent interview the President Obama stated that “immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity” (Malinkin n.pag.) and he was mistaken, as they really are rushing to Moscow in great numbers. The strange fact of high immigration rate makes people wonder what are the reasons for people to strive to the country which economy is rather instable and the level of life is not that much higher than theirs. According to UN Population Division estimation, as of 2013, Russian federation is on the second place in the world in numbers of immigrants (after the United States) (Malinkin n.pag). The paradox of Russian immigration is that despite of quite big numbers of Russian emigrants to other countries (by the way, also one of the highest rates in the world) bunch of people flow to Russia searching for opportunities. It turns out that often world society is mistaken about the amount of immigrants in Russia, as they look only on the rates of Russian emigrants not paying attention to how many people are entering Russian Federation. The incoming Russian immigrants are usually people from the post-soviet countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Kirgizstan etc. Statistics shows that in percentage rate the ethnical proportion of immigrants being on Russian territories stratify from 1992 to 2010 is the following. Russian – 65,1%, Armenians – 7,2%, Ukrainians and Belarusians – 6,6%, Tatars – 5,4%, Azerbaijanis – 2,3%, and other small ethnicities which native territories are the part of Russian Federation – 9,5% (Malinkin n.pag). The most complicated thing in the issue is that Russian territory is so big that it contains a lot of regions with multiple small and numerous ethnicities. Stalin’s repressions forced many of these people to move from their native lands. Thus after the collapse of the Soviet Union these ethnicities started coming back to their territories and it turned out that they became illegal immigrants within their own territories. That’s why the illegality of some immigrants should be re-estimated considering difficult historical circumstances. Immigration into Russian Federation can be of two types: legal and illegal labor immigrations. Even though legal immigrants are protected by law still their presence causes problems and brings some benefits. Juridical researches on the Immigration Law in Russian Federation state that it frequently happens that the law system has a lot of drawbacks which complicate the working conditions of legal immigrants (Tessier 247). For instance, the scientific elite of technological scientists suffers from lack of job places as Russia has no program for assimilating members of technological specialists who emigrated from the nearby countries (Tessier 248). Thus it becomes obvious that often even legal immigrants are suppressed by Russian government and their work on the Russian territory becomes impossible unless they find some third-rate job to survive in the country. This is one of the numerous examples of how brain drain happens in Russian Federation because the consequence of such a rude treatment of intellectual elites is degradation of cadres. Still the problematic part of immigration issue mostly concerns the illegal immigrants. The most densely populated by illegal immigrants city in Russia is Moscow, the capital. Moscow suffers from multiple problems concerning illegal immigrants. The biggest amount of people come from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan and other Central Asian countries which are considered to be troubled regions. First of all, it is important to notice that these people are mostly Muslims and they have a culture totally different from the Russian one, so it is pointed out that the increasing amount of these people changes the face of the city as it has become overpopulated by Central Asians (Karpov n.pag). These immigrants are mostly high-rise building construction workers, or servicemen (in general they accept low-paid third-rate jobs), and they also deal with illegal traffic between post-soviet countries. The point is that Moscow is rapidly developing nowadays so building companies need more and more workers. In order to satisfy their industrial needs the companies hire Central Asians and Caucasians for very low wages and exploit them as much as possible (Karpov n.pag). In fact, most of immigration problems in Moscow are caused by Central Asians. The first one is that Russian modern society is afraid of the immigrants. There are multiple reasons for that, including foreign culture, religious extremism, low social status of these people, poverty, and ignorance of Russian language (www.euronews.com). The language problem is quite crucial as in the modern situation it turns out that Moscow is fulfilled with people who don’t know national language and moreover who widespread their own language within the city. The point is that when the immigrants arrive to Russia they unite into a kind of gangs and cooperate with each other. This actually mostly makes Russian citizens to be afraid of the immigrants. The fear of the immigrants by Moscovites has recently turned into a huge riot against Central Asians and Caucasians. “Russia for Russians!” is an increasingly common chant by the protesters, who demand that darker-skinned people be kicked out” was reported in the Euronews channel up to the date of the protests (14.10.2013). Recent criminal statistics of Moscow showed that 44% of crimes are made by immigrants from Central Asia and Caucasus, policemen claim that without the immigrants Moscow would have been the safest place in the world (Fedorenko n.pag). Most of Russian people feel unsafe in the streets of their cities (especially in Moscow) until these illegal immigrants keep flowing into the capital. Except for the problem of people’s fears about safety another problem appears in Moscow and it is lack of work places. With the growth of population job positions for Russians become a rare thing as there is no reasons for employers to pay more for Russians if they can hire a worker for much less wage. Russian National Immigration Service is now fighting the increasing amount of illegal immigrants especially in Moscow, as the issue causes more and more problems every year and makes Russian citizens angry. But unlike the United States’ immigration situation, Russia contains much more different nationalities and ethnicities on its territory which complicates the estimation and determination of illegal immigrants for the Federal Immigration Service. As for the immigrants’ problems they are definitely faced with discrimination and abundance of their human rights, probably, as all the illegal immigrants in the world. Their living conditions are terrible as, for example, in Moscow the accommodation prices are one of the most expensive in the world so in order to survive these people sometimes even rent a one small flat for twenty fellows (Flintoff n.pag.). In general, “immigrants in Russia receive a cool welcome” as Corey Flintoff, a journalist, noted in his article about terrible file of the immigrants in Russian Federation. Perhaps, this is because the country and its native citizens have a lot of troubles to solve and immigration only adds some more problems. As far as Russia is the world’s second immigration point it faces a lot of problems connected with high immigration rate. Among them are huge changes of society and fulfillment of Russian culture by foreign ones, increasing unemployment, extreme criminal statistics engaged with the immigrants from Central Asia and Caucasus, and finally the rage of Russian citizens which is constantly growing. Works Cited Malinkin, Mary Elizabeth. “Russia: The Worlds Second-Largest Immigration Haven”. The National Interest. 18 Nov. 2014 http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-worlds-second-largest-immigration-haven-11053 Anderson, Barbara A. “Russia Faces Depopulation? Dynamics of Population Decline”. Population and Environment. 23(2002): 437-464. Tessier, Kevin. “Immigration Law in the Russian Federation”. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies. 3(1995): 245-253. “Russia’s Hatred of Immigrants ‘Will Get Worse’ Until Policies Change”. Euronews 18 Nov. 2014. http://www.euronews.com/2013/10/14/russia-s-hatred-of-immigrants-will-get-worse-until-policies-change/ Fedorenko, Vladimir. “Moscow would be world’s safest city without illegal immigration - mayor”. RIA Novosti. October 2014, n.pag. Flintoff, Corey. “Migrants Flock To Russia, But Receive A Cool Welcome”. NPR. 18 Nov. 2014. http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/08/07/209227290/migrants-flock-to-russia-but-receive-a-cool-welcome Read More