Russian Immigrant Woes

MOSCOW CRACKS DOWN ON ILLEGAL MIGRANTS
By Stephen Wilson

83 special deportation camps are planned as police are swooping down and arresting more and more.

               (Moscow, Russia) - Every day you witness the same scene! 

At between 9 to 10 in the morning you see long empty buses being driven to all the corners or ends of the streets and the OMAN (a special elite paramilitary police force) gather at the corner to stop any person with a distinctly non-Slavonic face.  They ask 'Can I see your passport 'and then parrying begins where the detained person attempts to persuade, make excuses or bribe themselves from being hauled on to those buses or escorted down to the local police station.

At around late morning you begin to notice that the OMAN police have saturated the locality. I have witnessed this scene so many times! I keep on thinking they are on the verge of stopping me when it turns out the police-officer is crossing my way to stop a Caucasian or African student. 

The last time I was stopped was twice, not far from the city centre. Once I was stopped on New Year's day. A police car, noticing I was one of the few persons strolling around the empty streets asked for my passport. I politely gave it to him. He asked me 'Where are you from? ' I stated 'I'm from Great Britain'. The policeman at once handed my passport back, apologized and saluted me.  He said 'Happy New Year' and allowed me to go. I was stopped again a year later. This time the policeman apologized saying, 'I thought you were Russian and that is why I stopped you.' Again, the policeman saluted me as if I were an army officer. I was bemused. I answered 'Thank you for the compliment' and discreetly disappeared in a hurry.

However, for the poor illegal migrants who were stopped at either Prospect Mir or Izmailovsky market, there were no salutes or warm greetings. Instead, they were swooped from their overcrowded homes to be taken to an improvised camp. They are made to raise their arms and march in an orderly fashion as if they are prisoners of war. When they walk too slowly, a policeman will aggressively push them on even if he is being filmed in front of Russian television. They are taken to a camp surrounded by a six metre high fence where there are large tents to accommodate up to 2000 people.


One camp is located at 2 Irtishiski Avenue in the Golyanov district near Metro Izmailovsky. The location lies in an unattractive and out of the way city. All the detained are taken to this camp to await deportation. There are around 1200 detainees. The chief of the militia (police) promises more will arrive.


The chief of militia is at pains to point out that the prisoners are being treated with at least the minimum possibly decency. They even invited Journalists to come and see the conditions for themselves. The chief, Anton Tsvetkov, claims they are well fed and can take a shower. Not only this, the police have rescued them! 'The Russian Federation saved those people from slave labour! We ask them what conditions in this camp do they not like? They want rice,vegetables and meat'. He insists that conditions could be far worse! 'It is better than a pioneer camp! ' (Given the terrible conditions of some of those camps, this could well be true!) 'Remember, in Soviet Times, they said 'How many more do we need to shoot?' That is not how many people see this! One migrant stated 'This camp is beautifully named. We call it, 'The special reception. It is not prison, but it is not any better!'

A representative official from the Vietnamese Embassy argues that woman are too weak and vulnerable to stay in such a camp where the sanitation is so bad. Most of the detained are from Vietnam. There are also women and children in the camp who have lost contact with their husbands who are still on the streets. When the chief retorted to the Vietnamese official that 'You forget that those people violated the law,' he answers sharply back 'No,the most important point is that they are human-beings '.


The Russian Government is strongly intent with going ahead with building 83 special deportation camps throughout Russia. It is almost impossible to estimate, but some people calculate there are as many as ten million migrants in Russia. Of those, there are countless illegal migrants whose tourist or work visas have long expired. They either work long hours in the market trading, or do construction work. For example, one migrant had been sewing up footballs for as much as 600 dollars a month. Since they are illegal, they are not entitled to free medical or educational care and are often used and abused as cheap labour. They live in overcrowded, crammed and at times, appalling conditions. They are hard workers. Yet their chances of finding work in the markets is becoming more and more difficult. The local government has been closing more and more markets down. Whereas in 2011 there were around 79 markets in Moscow, now they are only 51 left. A further 7 are to be 'liquidated'!

DOES IT MAKE ANY SENSE?

Apart from a few human rights groups and concerned people, there are not many people or political parties defending the migrants. On the contrary, almost every day you read a Russian newspaper gloating at the misfortune of migrants and cheering the government's latest deportation policies. 'About time!' they say. A head line in the notoriously obnoxious Moscow Komsomolets declares, 'Illegal Migrants of the World get out'! Despite the fact those many of those migrants are not Caucasian, they seek to deride them.' They are very aggressive, don't know how to behave and never observe the norms of our culture. They swagger around the streets as if they own Moscow, says a middle-aged manager called Masha.'


When Daniel Ogan, a teacher from America, tried to reason with many Russians, he gave up saying 'Attempting to get them to look at another view is impossible. I gave up. It is in vain. The prejudices against migrants, especially Caucasians is deeply ingrained in their minds'. Nevertheless, the number of migrants in Moscow has risen dramatically and fill the posts in all the supermarkets. Rather than depriving Russians of jobs they want, they fill up the lowest  paid and most unwanted jobs. Few Russians want to work on a construction site.


Yet a mass deportation scheme makes no logical sense! Russia has a huge shortage of labour, not to mention a demographic catastrophe. There is also a shortage of male partners for middle-aged women who would like to marry but can't. In China, the Chinese have the opposite problem. There are not enough women to marry. The Vietnamese and Chinese are often hard working, honest and good natured. Why not allow them to come and work in Russian and settle down? They could marry Russian women. When I put this question to some Russian women, they wouldn't have it. Yes, if the Migrant was European, 'but we don't want more migrants from Asia!' They thought I was just joking when I suggested 'It is your duty to marry a Chinese migrant so that Russia can have more children'...Well, I was half -joking, but why not?


More migrants might even stimulate the Russian economy. Instead of penalizing a poor and desperate migrant slave, managers should be brought to heel or at least persuaded to grant migrants a decent living wage as well as limited working hours.


In practice, rapine officials and employers exploit illegal migrants as cheap labour. A courtyard migrant worker earns 18,000 rubles a month, when his official wage amounts to 43,000 rubles. The difference between actual and official payments is pocketed by corrupt officials.

Unfortunately, all the political parties are saying we will end illegal labour, but won't defend or stand up for migrants. They presume that it is Moscow which is doing migrants a favour, rather than vice-versa. A current slogan of some opposition leaders is 'Don't feed the Caucasus', when in reality it is migrants who are feeding Moscow!


As the Government begins to become more and more unpopular, it will attempt to distract attention from its own sheer incompetence by blaming migrants and Americans for the main economic problems. They will blame anybody but themselves.The crack down on illegal migrants is therefore set to continue.