Their planned resettlement programme is on the verge of total collapse.
The programme for the relocation to Russia of Russians living abroad, initiated by President Vladimir Putin in 2006, has practically collapsed. Only 10,000 people have moved to Russia, instead of the expected 300,000 a year. Yesterday the head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstantin Romodanovsky nonetheless announced that the programme was not on the verge of collapse, and that it was "still fully functional". Opponents of the project think that its conditions are "only suitable for those people who need to flee or who have nowhere else to go."
Yesterday the head of the FMS, Konstantin Romodanovsky, admitted that the Government programme of Measures to Assist the Voluntary Relocation to the Russian Federation of Russians Living Abroad" has so far only accounted for 5% of the overall number of migrants. According to recent FMS data, about 10,000 people have accepted the offer in over two and a half years, although it has the capacity to aid the return of as many as 300,000 people annually. Mr Romodanovsky nonetheless said that this result did not amount to the programme's collapse: "The process for encouraging people to return has been scrupulously worked out." The head of the FMS told Kommersant, "It just needs a bit of polishing. The stream of people interested in moving to Russia is not drying up."
You will recall that the Government programme for the resettlement in Russia of Russians living abroad began in June 2006 following the decree of former President Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin has raised the issue of returning nationals regularly since 2001, specifically saying: "Without attracting Russians living outside Russia it will take us much longer to resolve our demographic and economic problems."
The state programme envisaged resettling millions of foreigners: former Soviet citizens who after the USSR disintegration received the citizenship of new post-Soviet countries; those who emigrated from the USSR, the RSFSR, and later from Russia, as well as their descendants. The programme offers to compensate them for the cost of their journey back, and a small grant to help them get started (in 2007, it was 40,000 to 60,000 roubles, and now it is 120,000 roubles), six months' unemployment benefit, a termless social benefits package which includes education and healthcare, and co-financing a down payment on a mortgage. The programme covers twelve Russian regions: the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Primorye Territory, the Khabarovsk Territory, the Amur Region, the Irkutsk Region, the Kaliningrad Region, the Kaluga Region, the Lipetsk Region, the Novosibirsk Region, the Tambov Region, the Tver Region, and the Tyumen Region. It was expected that between 40,000 and 100,000 people would move to these areas in 2007 alone.
Russians living abroad (worldwide the Russian diaspora is estimated at up to 30 million people) have virtually ignored the programme. In addition, those who did decide to take advantage of it came across considerable difficulties. For example, it became apparent that according to the law On Russian Citizenship they could only apply for a Russian passport after living in Russia for five years. Strategic adjustments were made to the law, but that prompted a sharp rise in passport applications. For example, former citizens in the Kaluga Region had to wait for up to nine months to get a passport.
In addition, virtually no participating regions were able to offer an adequate standard of services to those who resettled. Some municipalities even refused to accept them, citing a shortage of housing and resources. Members of staff at Civil Assistance, a human rights organisation that deals with refugee and migrant problems, told Kommersant about a group of ethnic Russian farmers from Uruguay. They moved to the Krasnoyarsk Territory on the resettlement programme, where they were offered work as cattlemen in a small village afflicted by rampant drinking. As soon as they got their citizenship, they moved to the Belgorod Region, which was not participating in this programme, but which offered farmers much better conditions. Moreover there are known cases of people getting their passports and moving straight to big cities, which did not participate in the programme due to overcrowding.
All this led the FMS to change its plans. This year the agency expects only 20,000 migrants, and in the 2009 budget, the programme's financing was cut from 9 billion to 1.8 billion roubles.
As Mr Romodanovsky told Kommersant, the decision to cut the FMS programme's budget was taken on its own merits, and is in no way linked to the financial crisis: "We simply realised that the reality was different from our expectations." In addition, the FMS is willing to hone the programme to enable more people to participate. After its initial extension to cover migrants from CIS countries (tens of thousands of whom do not have Russian passports and who are essentially illegal migrants), the FMS also proposes that it includes students studying in Russia and people willing to serve in the Russian army. It also wants to increase the compensation payment from 120,000 roubles to 180,000 roubles for those who are prepared to move from abroad to the Baikal and Far East regions. Finally, the agency wants to increase the number of regions participating from 12 to 40-45: "The number of people who will want to take up this offer will increase proportionally to this expansion," Mr Romodanovsky said.
The Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs and Russian Nationals Abroad, Konstantin Zatulin, told Kommersant, that the programme's authors made several key errors: "They started talking about migrants, forgetting about those right in front of them, those who are already in Russia, and whose dire situation was the worst advertisement the campaign could have. The programme's conditions are only suitable for those people who need to flee or who have nowhere else to go, while for the rest it is singularly uninviting. And finally, no one has explained in detail the geopolitical significance of the document: After all, resettling all Russians from the Crimea or from Kazakhstan would mean Russia losing its influence in those areas."
Human rights activists hold a similar view. Ms Svetlana Gannushkina, chairperson of the Civil Asistance, told Kommersant: "The programme failed to take into account the migrants' interests. It is overly bureaucratic and aims to regulate the movement of foreign nationals too harshly. Therefore, it simply did not correspond to the public interest. The people implementing it were simply unable to treat those who were arriving in Russia as if they were citizens with the full complement of rights."
Andrei Kozenko