Russia's migrant workers live under the radar

Washington

ON A brutally cold day in February, hundreds of labourers from Uzbekistan mill around in the snow and mud of a construction site 10 miles outside Moscow. Surrounding them are a series of unfinished 18-storey apartment blocks meant to serve as homes for Russian military officers.

Work has stopped because the men haven't been paid in weeks. With nowhere to go, they stand around smoking and chatting at the vast project locals call "Samolyot" - Russian for "the plane", after a nearby monument to World War II pilots. At night, they hole up in a nearby shantytown of corrugated steel cabins. There's no shower, sink, or toilet - instead there's a row of blue portable toilets, each half-filled with stalagmites of frozen excrement.

In the morning, the men shiver over a fire cooking carrot gruel and melting ice from a nearby stream to drink. Most are poorly dressed for the 10-degree weather - one labourer emerges with nothing on his feet but wool socks and flip-flops.

Work sites filled with immigrant labourers aren't particularly novel in developed countries, and Russia is no exception. According to the UN, the nation has 11 million foreigners, many without visas and from largely Muslim, Central Asian countries. But as Europe's refugee crisis continues to fuel a global resurgence of isolationism and xenophobia, in Russia - the world's third-biggest destination for international immigrants - things are being handled a little differently.

A recent editorial in Nezavisimaya Gazeta was headlined Trump and Le Pen would be opposition in Russia. Under President Vladimir Putin, the newspaper argues, being anti-immigration is the same as being anti-establishment.

"Domestic TV blasts Europe for multi-culturalism, for receiving refugees from the Middle East and Africa, for tolerance to migrants," its editors wrote. But in Russia, anti-immigrant stances are sometimes "characterised by the authorities as an unacceptable form of nationalism". The reality in Russia is that the immigrant economy is very much part of its recovery from a prolonged recession. And the government knows it.

"Russia is experiencing a huge deficit of workforce," explains Andrey Movchan, director of the economic policy programme at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "We badly need cheap labour that cannot be found inside the country." Immigrants clean city streets and maintain huge residential buildings that dot the skyline. They play a key role in manufacturing, retail and service sectors as well. In the restaurant industry, kitchen staff from countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Georgia stay for years, sending most of their money home.

"If you take out the migrants, who comprise 15 per cent of the Russian workforce, it will be impossible to replace them," Mr Movchan says, warning that the higher wages needed to attract Russian workers to such jobs would raise prices and hurt the recovery.

The sharp decline in oil prices - and Western sanctions triggered by Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine - was followed by a drop in immigration. The number of Uzbeks who crossed over fell by 21 per cent, while Tajiks declined by 11 per cent and Kyrgyz fell by 5 per cent. But since then, immigration has rebounded. Russia had 161,000 foreigners entering the country in 2015 and staying. In 2016, that number increased to 196,000, according to the Russian Foreign Trade Academy and Gaidar Institute.

Work-permit sales in Moscow rose by 10 per cent last year, too. With most immigrants coming from former Soviet states such as Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the migration has proven beneficial to all involved: Those two countries top the list of global economies relying on remittances, according to the World Bank.

Restrictive immigration policies in Europe and America turn not only on fear of economic displacement, but fear of terrorism. In Russia, there are similar concerns, but they don't resonate as loudly. Mr Putin said last month that as many as 5,000 people from former Soviet members joined the Islamic State in Syria, and in 2016 security agents arrested at least two groups of immigrants suspected of plotting attacks on Russian soil. Yet, the government in February announced 200,000 previously deported Tajiks would be allowed back into Russia.

Mr Putin has been circumspect when it comes to addressing Islamic extremism. Russia is home to an estimated 9.4 million Muslims who make up 6.5 per cent of the population. Islam has also been proclaimed one of the four religions indigenous to Russia. Nevertheless, Mr Movchan says populist anti-immigrant sentiment is common and police raids of work sites are a regular occurrence. But economic imperatives always hold more sway. "The authorities will conduct deportations for a show and adopt populist laws," he says. "But the situation will stay unchanged." Immigrant labourers at sites such as Samolyot describe daily struggles to survive amid low pay, mistreatment and discrimination.

"Moscow was my dream, a beautiful city where there is lots of money" says Fakhreddin Yakubov, 31. "But now I just want to leave." Sixty-year-old Murad Yermolatov is similarly despondent. A father of five, he came to Russia with the promise of work in the town of Khimki. All went well for two months, but then he was fired. Having changed several jobs, he ended up at Samolyot, where his troubles really started.

For several weeks, he was paid. Then the money dried up. He continued working 10 hours a day, six days a week for six months, but says he was paid less than a third of what he was promised. He hoped to send money to his family in the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan, but now he can't scrape together enough to even get home. One after another, workers at Samolyot repeat the same story.

"They wanted to dupe us from the outset," says 26-year-old Ruslan Kalbergenov, who hails from the Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan. Like many others, Mr Kalbergenov says he came to the site on the promise of legal residency, but those papers have yet to materialise.

The workers are indignant, but when they come face to face with Alibek Gazimagomedov, who introduces himself as a shareholder in the construction company that now owns the site, they grow silent. Mr Gazimagomedov says that since they have no written contracts, he isn't responsible for debt accumulated by the previous owner.

"Do I owe you anything?" he asks them in a loud voice. The workers murmur no. Mr Gazimagomedov says the company has fully paid workers who have signed contracts, adding that current management has no responsibility for those who had informal agreements with the prior owner. Bakhrom Khamroyev, a human rights activist from Uzbekistan who works with immigrant labourers such as those at Samolyot, says Central Asians who lack Russian language skills or formal education are frequently victimised.

As much as Russia needs immigrant labour, there's also still red tape. In 2010, work permits were introduced in response to a surge in migration. These days, a monthly permit requires a language test and costs more than 4,000 rubles (S$96), a significant amount for immigrant workers who make, on average, US$400 a month. Around 1.73 million permits were issued in 2015, according to the government.

At Samolyot, construction has resumed, though with fewer workers - Bakhrom Khamroyev, the human rights activist, says some of the men protesting unpaid wages had been told to leave. BLOOMBERG