New Law Raises Fears of Neo-Serfdom in Russia

New amendments to Russia’s migration regulations, signed into law by President Vladimir Putin in late June, tighten the leash on the movements and activities of foreigners staying in the country. The legislation, which went into effect on July 8, redefines the rules for foreign nationals – migrant workers, corporate employees, students – registering their temporary residency in Russia.

Foreigners already registered in Russia before the law went into effect may continue to stay until their registration expires, according to an official letter from Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (the government organ now solely responsible for regulating migration) to Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

However, the amendments significantly alter the terms according to which foreign workers and students officially stay in Russia. From now on they are bound to their place of residence, not unlike the serfs of the Russian empire.

Our partner publication Novaya Gazeta looks at how Russia’s new migration legislation affects foreign workers and students, the Russian organizations and individuals responsible for registering them, and who really benefits from the new rules.

Bound to an Address

Foreign nationals arriving in Russia are required to register with the Federal Migration Service. Furthermore, they cannot register alone. The inviting party is responsible for registering them.

Photo credit: Vlad Doshkin / Novaya Gazeta

In the case of a personal visit, this means the hotel owner or landlord of their rented apartment; students must be registered by their educational institution. In the case of workers, their employers are responsible (by law a company is only required to report that a foreigner is working for them, registering them in the country is optional).

For legal entities the procedure used to be simple: the law allowed a student or employee to register at the address of the institution’s main building or the company’s legal address. The individual could live in another area, but if the police or another state institution needed to find them, the latter could refer to the address of registration.

This scheme had its advantages and disadvantages. “There are firms that had around five or six thousand foreign employees. They could comfortably register them at their address in order to ensure timely payment for labor permits as well as to extend their work contracts,” says migration expert Svetlana Salamova.

The other side of the issue is the living conditions for these workers, in particular, migrant workers from Central Asia. “Sometimes employers would place 15 workers in one trailer, in tough living conditions. In addition, finding people according to their registered address was often very difficult,” explains human rights activist Andrey Babushkin.

Addressing these issues was part of the impetus to reformulate the terms in the migration laws. However, in fact, the situation for workers and their employers has worsened under the new legislation.

The amendments signed on June 28 state that a foreigner’s registered place of residence must be the place where they actually live, rather than some other address of registration. If they are registered by an organization, then foreigners must live in company-owned premises, which should be equipped to meet basic living needs.

Now, a foreign worker, if he wishes to be registered by a company, is required to permanently reside in the residence allocated to him by the company.

Photo credit: Yuriy Kozyrev / Novaya Gazeta

The catch is that most legal entities simply do not have living quarters. Construction companies have it easier, as they can now register workers in cabins and trailers. All other firms have no places to put their foreign workers. Sofas and microwaves do not readily indicate that a place is fit for residence.

“From a legal point of view, living quarters are places that are registered as such,” says Salamova. “An office with a sofa is non-residential, but if the company allows you to put your suitcases, a stove, and refrigerator there, then theoretically you can be registered there. However, in this case, a personnel officer will have to register you with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and provide the migration authorities with proper documentation stating that the area is registered as residential.”

More for the Landlords

Large auditing and consulting companies (which employ many foreigners – not just expats but also Russian university graduates from various former Soviet countries) have started warning their employees of the need to find places where they can be registered.

AT Consulting marketing and public relations director Viktoriya Plotinskaya explained to Novaya Gazeta that the company’s foreign workers must register at their actual place of residence before July 9 (previously they registered at the company’s legal address). She added that the company is “ready to help with legal consulting.” Plotinskaya maintains that foreign employees should have no problem registering at a rented apartment.

However, Novaya Gazeta has learned that many foreign workers are already concerned about being dismissed and being forced to return to their native countries, as the owners of their apartments have no intention of registering them.

Photo credit: Vitaliy Kavtaradze / Novaya Gazeta

“Companies are losing the ability to control the migration records of their foreign workers, while foreign citizens living in rented apartments are going to have to make deals with the owners of their apartments concerning registration,” says Roman Gusev, director of the taxes and legal services department of Ernst & Young, a company that does not plan to reduce its number of foreign workers.

“In practice, we see that many renters refuse to take part in this procedure and are unwilling to take on additional administrative duties. In these cases, foreigners will have to frantically find a new place to live,” he adds. Apartment owners that agree to register these workers will have to agree to a process of strictly monitoring every instance that their foreign tenants enter the territory of the Russian Federation, as they need to report to the migration service after every entry, Gusev explains.

He also says that there are risks even for conscientious landlords – if the foreigner enters the territory of the Russian Federation and forgets to announce it, then the former will find themselves breaking the law without even knowing it. On the other hand, foreigners could find themselves in a sticky situation if their landlord suddenly refuses to report them to the migration service or is unable to do so because they’re out of town, for example.

Even if landlords can be persuaded to register their foreign tenants, there are no guarantees they will do it for free. A formal lease agreement presumes that the landlord pays taxes for the leased apartment, so many rental and registration agreements are based on “friendship.” Either way, the added service of registering a foreigner is likely to raise costs for foreigners renting apartments in Russia.

Better Stay Home?

Leading up to July 8, human rights activists have already received signals of politically motivated deportations of migrants on the basis of their living in places that don’t coincide with their registration address. The new legislation essentially makes this an official right of the Ministry of Internal Affairs: if an individual who does not hold a Russian passport is found by an inspector not at his registered place of residence, he can be deported.

Human rights activist Valentina Chupik explains that this happened to citizens of Uzbekistan in the Omsk region on July 4. The foreigners came to the migration center with registration from an authorized intermediary, and they were deported on the grounds that they did not live where they were registered.

In other words, the new law does not even allow for a migrant to spend the night where he is not registered.

Hostel Hostages

This law also affects all foreign students in Russia. Previously, universities registered them at their main buildings. Now all foreign students will have to register at the dormitory buildings of their educational institutions. But the number of places in a dormitory does not correspond to the number of foreign students (as dormitories accommodate both local and foreign students). There are also those who would rather rent apartments, like students with children. Previously, they could rely on the university to register them, now they will have to register themselves independently.

Photo credit: Yuriy Kozyrev / Novaya Gazeta

Students who are registered in dormitories essentially become hostages. Any violation of university regulations, or, for instance, attending a rally, gives the university administration a reason to deny “inconvenient” foreign students registration. For students, this automatically means their violation of migration regulations, which can ultimately lead to their deportation.

The universities do not seem to know what to do now. For most of them, the new law comes as a big surprise. The main question now is how they can accept foreign students if it’s impossible to legally register them all.

The People’s Friendship University of Russia in Moscow refused to comment on the amended laws. The Higher School of Economics stated that they are in the process of working out a mechanism for dealing with the new rules.

In Moscow State University (MSU), they said that “the organization of timely registration for migrant workers and a visa extension for foreign students living in rented apartments is currently being studied by the management of Moscow University in order to find the best solution.” MSU also stressed that it is not considering limiting applications from foreign students in conjunction with the new law.

Migration expert Svetlana Salamova explains, if a university does not have a dormitory or enough residential space, a student can ask the institution to register him as a student who lives off campus. Then, the landlord of the student’s apartment can register the student, if he wants.

Holding Russians Responsible

Foreigners are not the only ones affected by the new law. All landlords who house foreign citizens will automatically be responsible for registering them. Moreover, the Russian citizens will be held responsible for their foreign tenants, even if the latter have left but the migration documents are still in effect.

Photo credit: Vitaliy Kavtaradze / Novaya Gazeta

“Those who lease their apartments to foreigners will also face heightened supervision and fines in cases where the law isn’t followed,” says Salamova. Such fines existed before, but were almost never issued.

Shortly after the end of the World Cup football tournament, according to Novaya Gazeta reports, the police will increase domestic searches for unregistered foreigners.

A draft law under consideration in the State Duma allows the receiving party to remove a migrant from the register independently and instantly via the internet. In other words, it allows a landlord to remove his foreign tenant from the register at any time (for instance, claiming that they have “lost touch”). In this case, the foreign person will simply be at the mercy of the landlord, who can raise the rent at will and threaten to divest the tenant of their registration.

In addition, if a migrant does not live in the apartment he is registered in, he may find himself without his documents in order at any time since according to another amendment, a migrant can be unregistered from an apartment without being informed of this. In this case, a foreigner can be detained on the street, automatically fined and deported.

In mid-June, the State Duma approved another bill, which states that the organization that invited the foreigner bears full responsibility for his actions. For example, if he works anywhere besides the organization or participates in illegal actions, then the organization will be held responsible. In addition, the company must ensure that the migrant immediately leaves the country after his contract ends, otherwise, the organization will be fined.

At that time, a new list of fines for noncompliance with these rules was approved and is applicable to both organizations and individual Russian citizens. Under the new rules of the administrative code for violations related to migrants, individuals will pay up to 4,000 rubles ($64), while officials pay up to 50 thousand ($800), and legal entities up to 500 thousand ($8000).

Who Benefits?

By and large, the laws adopted and still under consideration (the Ministry of Internal Affairs has created an expert group for the development of the migration legislation) need review and revision since, according to human rights activist Andrey Babushkin, “the amount of harm from them exceeds their benefits.”

No public analysis of these new rules was performed, nor were independent migration lawyers consulted. The fact that they were passed without public scrutiny suggests that these new repressive migration rules are advantageous precisely in this form.

The question remains as to who will benefit from these changes. Irina Yarovaya, Duma deputy and author of the bill making it easy for a Russian citizen to revoke a migrant’s registration,  believes that some of these changes are in the interest of ordinary Russians.

Human rights activists believe that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is now completely in charge of migration, is using this as another means for extorting bribes. Any migrant could be stopped in the streets and threatened with deportation, and any landlord could be scared with fines.

The threat of deportation is also a convenient means of dealing with “disagreeable” people.

Novaya Gazeta has reported on the family of Gulchekhra Aliyeva, who, together with her son, was stuck in the police department for five days in Ramenki without food or water, allowed only to use the toilet occasionally. The police, according to Aliyev and human rights activists, extorted money from them, threatening to deport them in connection with tightening security measures before the World Cup.

After the intervention of human rights lawyers, Aliyev was released, and a criminal case was opened against those who tortured her. According to human rights activist Valentina Chupik, “When they were summoned for questioning, it turned out that they are going to be deported for being registered at [Aliyeva’s] place of employment, and not the place where they live,” even though the law was not yet in force.

In universities, officers from the Russian security service sometimes have ties to an institution’s migration department, according to Novaya Gazeta. This legislation essentially signals a return of the Soviet approach to “working” with foreigners in universities. By creating an environment where foreign students find themselves outside the law, they can be intimidated to “cooperate” if necessary.

Lastly, this law benefits those who can provide migrants with a fictive registration, as the entire registration process gets more shadowy. The area around Moscow’s Kazansky Station seems to have the largest concentration of such “services,” with people operating in plain view of law enforcement agents who turn a blind eye. The cost of a fictive registration is in the range of 7,000–8,000 rubles (around $115–$125), a significant amount for those coming into the country.

Already, migrants arriving at the Multifunctional Migration Center (MMC) in Sakharovo (a state agency) cannot register there for the period that they await official documents like a work permit. Human rights activists say that the MMC no longer has the right to register them because of the new amendments.

“Everyone goes to the Kazansky railway station to obtain a fictive registration,” says Valentina Chupik.