Paul Goble
Staunton, May 28 – The shortage of workers in the Russian Federation is now so severe that Moscow can’t even build atomic power plants without the use of migrant workers, according to Svobodnaya Pressa journalist German Galkin, on the basis of his examination of the situation at a Urals atomic power plant construction site.
There hundreds of Central Asian migrants are being used to build a new atomic power plant, to the horror of many Russians who object to having migrants work there and in seeming violation of government rules specifying that foreigners can’t be used for such projects (svpressa.ru/society/article/466389/).
Pandering to the population, the local interior ministry raided the site and arrested more than 100 migrants. But until new workers are found to replace them, Galkin suggests, either the work won’t be done at all or migrants will be found – evidence, he says, that shows however much migrants are hated, the country can’t do without them even on critical projects like this.
He also points to another process now underway: regions and republics that had adopted laws against the use of migrants, laws that please indigenous Russians, are now backing away from such legislation because employers simply can’t find enough citizens to do the work.
That retreat hasn’t gotten a great deal of attention in the Moscow media; but it may mark the end of any countrywide effort to expel or even seriously reduce the number of migrant workers in Russia and mean that Russia will again be trying to recruit them in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
But now, he and other Russian journalists point out, Moscow will find it more difficult and more expensive to do so because many of those who earlier had looked only to Moscow as a possible place of work are now looking to countries in the Middle East and South Asia where conditions are better and salaries higher.
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