RUSSIA AS A DEMOGRAPHIC MELTING POT

RIA Novosti, Russia
February 10, 2005

MOSCOW, February 10. (RIA Novosti)-The decline in Russia’s
economically active population in the next 15 years will seriously
restrict the country’s economic growth. Russia’s workforce is
contracting due to fewer residents with Russian roots from the CIS
and Baltic countries coming to resettle in Russia, writes a weekly
magazine, Itogi.

According to Yury Dyomin, the first deputy director of the Federal
Migration Service, his department issued registration documents to
over 100,000 foreign citizens in 2004 as part of a program to attract
foreign workforce. The largest CIS workforce suppliers are Ukraine
(36,152), Moldova (14,137) and Armenia (4,793).

The official believes that it would be ideal for Russia if
representatives of indigenous Russian ethnic groups came to the
country. However, this is hardly possible today. At the same time,
the country is traditionally a multi-ethnic state and “Russian
society has always been able to absorb other peoples in its melting
pot.”
Illegal migration is a particularly acute problem for the country.
Various estimates put the number of illegal immigrants in Russia
today at between 1.5 million and 15 million. Therefore, Mr. Dyomin
believes his department’s objective is to create conditions for
legalizing the larger part of this workforce.

This is difficult to do because the number of the documents that CIS
citizens must present to enter Russia has been recently cut from 18
to 5 to comply with international norms.

In the past 12 years, over 8 million Russians from other CIS
countries and the Baltic states have come to live in Russia. To step
up this process, the possibility for migrants to feel comfortable in
Russia must be sealed legislatively. Apart from that, conditions have
to be created to encourage migrants to settle in regions that need
manpower, for example, Siberia and the Far East.